


Not Your Average Teen Slasher Flick (Rated R)

by Kymopoleia



Series: Everyone Hates What's On TV [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Dub/noncon, Gen, Scream AU, Teacher-Student Relationship, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character, Violence, be warned this gets some really serious gore in it ok, minor named characters from other voltron series, this is really really fucked up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-28
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2018-08-18 07:15:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8153557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kymopoleia/pseuds/Kymopoleia
Summary: After a student is murdered unexpectedly, a group of teens are tormented viciously and sometimes even fatally by someone within the group who is using masks and voice modulators to mask themselves.Or, the author has a shameless love for the Scream franchise and decides to write something based off of it.(same fic, mildly different details)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> the version of the fic that has she/her pidge pronouns, will contain noncon in later chapters and will tag for it then. until then, this fic was written to get me thru some dysphoria so i do what i want and hurt fictional characters instead of dealing with real life problems so YEAH

It’s a good night.

The stars are out, the gusts of wind aren’t too cold, the leaves are just starting to turn colors and lend way to autumn, and there’s an undercurrent to everything, as if something is about to happen and the universe knows it.

Rolo scratches his chin as he looks through the fridge, finding that his uncle, as usual, only left him a few artifacts of leftovers, some beer that they both knew he didn’t like, and a casserole from the lady next door. He knows he’s never had to do much work to impress his tutor, what with the bar being set pretty low for the only senior in his tenth grade English class, but it feels awkward to have people over other than his nearest and dearest without atleast something to nibble on.

He steps back, ignoring the chime of his phone on the counter in favor of rifling through the pantry. Stale tortilla chips? No salsa. Lucky charms? Nah, his uncle ate all the marshmallows out of them forever ago, like an ass. On-the-stove popcorn? Ancient, but it’ll do.

Only once the popcorn is on the stove does Rolo check his phone. There’s a couple texts from Lance and Nyma, both separately and in the group chat. He ignores them, but not before smiling at the cute pic of Pidge’s dog, and refocuses on the other notification.

When had he missed a call? And an unknown number too… it might be his tutor. He supposes being high doesn’t give one much of an excuse as far as awareness goes, but Rolo thinks he’d have been able to catch his phone buzzing up a storm on the countertop. Well, whatever. With a glance at the popcorn, he presses redial.

First ring, nothing.

Second ring, his heart beats just a bit faster anxiously, wondering if the caller had just been someone with a wrong number and if he’s going to be annoying them.

Third ring, he finds the ashtray on the counter and picks up the blunt that had been there, and lifts it for a long drag.

Halfway through the fourth ring it cuts short, startling Rolo into dropping the blunt. A half second after he does, a confused voice comes through the speakers. “Hello?”

Rolo bites his tongue to keep from cursing as he bends over to grab it. “Hey, who is this?”

There’s a short laugh. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

Rolo blinks and stands up, rolling his eyes at himself and laughing. The person on the other end of the line sounds a bit tinny, as if they were suffering from poor reception, but other than that they sound pretty nice. Normal. “Yeah, shit, sorry. I got a call from this number a couple minutes ago, and was trying to find out if it was anyone I knew.”

“Oh, I realized after I dialed that it was a wrong number. I hope I didn’t interrupt anything…”

“No, no. I’m just waiting for someone to come over, making some grub, you know. Normal Tuesday night.” Way to overshare? He curses himself and steps back to the stove. “Well, since it was a wrong number, I’ll let you go.”

“Wait!” He pauses, thumb halfway to the ‘end call’ button. “I’ve got a few minutes. What are you making?”

Kind of weird, but okay? Maybe the guy was just lonely. Rolo uses a pot holder to grab the handle of the popcorn pan, shaking it a little bit and waiting for it to heat up. Like a heathen. “Well, there weren’t many options, but I trudged up some old stove popcorn.”

“Stove popcorn? Like the kind you have to actually put on the burner?”

“Yeah, I know.” Rolo smiles in satisfaction at the sudden ‘pop’. “Archaic.”

“Totally. Almost like you’re back in the nineties, like, oh what’s that one movie?”

“Hm?” He was way too high to be guessing nineties movies based off of clues like ‘popcorn’. “Gonna have to be more specific, buddy.”

There’s a considering noise. “Well, it was a horror movie.”

“You like horror movies?”

“Well yeah, who doesn’t?”

Rolo scrunches his nose up. “I guess I do, but they’re not my favorite.”

“Aw, why?”

He shrugs and steps away from the gradual racket the popcorn is growing up to become. “They’re too repetitive for me. Like, there’s always the same old psycho killer, the same old final girl, and the same bloodbath. It’s boring.”

“You don’t care about the gory details?” The voice has this familiar pout to it, but Rolo can’t place it. He sits down at his couch, glancing out the screen doors and yawning a little bit. It’s getting pretty late, and no word from his tutor. Weird.

“Nah. I go for the main plot.”

“What about the really unique horror movies?”

Rolo blows a raspberry. “Unique? Please, there’s the ghost ones, found footage ones, witch ones, zombie ones, creepy woods ones, and psycho highschool ones. Variety, but no originality.”

“What about the Saw movies? Well, the first one. It was unique when it came out.”

“Before my time. Boring. Torture porn.”

“Scream?”

Rolo shrugs. He’ll give wrong number that one. “I guess, but the idea behind them is a bit overplayed now.”

“What do you think the big idea was?”

“Well, it’s all about how horrible media is for us, to start with. Which is annoying then, annoying now, and aimed at the older audience who will actually rally behind ‘boo, technology is bad and violence on TV causes violence’.” He shrugs. “I’ve never believed that. People do their own stupid shit for their own stupid reasons, get me?”

“Yeah, I get you.” There’s a rustling sound through the line, and Beezer, his thirteen year old Mastiff, glances up at him with puppy eyes. He leans over for a well-deserved head pat. “Go on?”

“Beyond the generic hurr durr technology is bad thing, it also preys on the audience’s knowledge of horror movies. It assumes too much! Like, yeah, totally, everyone watching this movie is gonna know all this trivia and stuff about other horror movies. Then they’re all gonna get the references and jokes and it’ll make sense! I had to google so much shit to understand the opening conversation in the first one.” It does not escape him, the ironies of trash talking Scream while cooking popcorn and talking about horror flicks. “Wait… did you just pick horror movies because of the popcorn reference?”

“Good boy! I knew you’d get it.” Wrong number laughs, and there’s a noise outside. Rolo sits up and narrows his eyes, but can’t see anything, so he chalks it up to some squirrels and leans over to plant a big kiss on the mastiff’s forehead.

“Just took some wheedling. Congrats, wrong number! Want a jolly rancher?”

“Yeah, actually. Toss one out the window?”

Rolo freezes. “Excuse me?”

There’s a beat. “I asked you to pass me one through the phone.”

“No you didn’t. You… you said through the window.” The popcorn is still popping, and he remembers the open window in the kitchen. He stands and casts a nervous look towards the kitchen. “Are you in my house?”

“No,” The phone goes staticky for a second, and the tinny sound shifts to something weird and autotuned. “I’m just joking. When’s your tutor getting here?”

“I never told you that, fucker.” Rolo snaps, looking around anxiously. Why was his uncle under the impression that wild prints and sparse light sources made the space look classy? Every shape and shadow looks menacing. “This wasn’t a wrong number, was it?”

“Ah, you got me.” The person laughs again, sounding cruel. “But that’s alright, isn’t it? You hate horror movies, so let’s make this short. Good ol’ slasher. All pain, no gain.”

“Jesus, this isn’t a movie!” Rolo takes a step back, then grimaces and steps forwards. There was a shotgun in the cabinet under the sink, if he could get it then he wouldn’t need to worry about this creep. “I should just hang up on you and call the police.”

“They’d never make it in time.” The creep sing-songs. “Face it, you’re alone and high and unarmed. The only question?”

“What?” Rolo snaps.

“Are you about to run into me or am I behind you?”

He opens the door to the kitchen and screams at the tower of black fabric in front of him, backing up as it’s leaning forwards and toppling. His heart pounds as he toes it, realizing that it’s just a broom in a cloak.

“Is this some kind of joke?” He spits into the phone, but there’s no reply.

A sharp smell hits his nose and he realizes the popcorn is starting to burn, fuck. Just what he needs right now.

There’s a sudden pain in his shoulder, the sensation of something entering him that shouldn’t be there, the sudden catch in his breath, the hoarse choking noise from just how much it hurt.

One hand reaches for the doorway to steady himself as adrenaline kicks in and his head begins to pound, the other reaching back to scrabble for the handle before it’s pulled out with a wet noise.

“F- ff-uck,” he groans, turning and finding a masked figure, eerie white mask, spattered with a few specks of his blood. Nasty.

Rolo backs up, screwing his face up in pain and disgust. “Fuck off! I didn’t do anything to you!”

Beezer barks once, and Rolo rushes his attacker, shoving at his chest to try to overpower him. Instead he gets a knife to the stomach this time, though he does manage to shove him away. Well, he thinks it’s a him. The mask is lifeless and blank, not even eyeholes to give him a clue.

The masked man twists the knife inside him, and Rolo swears he can feel the sudden imbalance of his insides and hear how they squish inside him. Nasty.

He coughs, and has seen enough movies to know that in a second he’s going to be choking on bubbles of blood. Rolo grabs at the handle of the knife again and steps back.

The other man steps with him and pushes the knife in deeper, chasing Rolo until his back is to the pantry door. The smell of burning popcorn, of a fire about to start, burns both of their noses. Rolo coughs, already feeling the blood rising in his throat. The man pulls the knife out again and stabs two, three, four times, Rolo’s attempts to push him back stunted by pain.

He lifts a hand to scrabble for the edge of the mask, tugging it up. Before he gets far, a blood-slippery leather glove wraps around his wrist and the knife drags up from his belly button to the bottom of his ribcage. He wouldn’t know that, getting delirious from shock and blood loss, except for the rough tugging sensation as it hits bone.

Then the knife stabs in and up.

Rolo passes out.

Allura wakes up from a poor night’s sleep to the smell of grease, bacon, and peppermint tea on her nightstand. Sitting up shows that her father, as per usual, had left early but made sure to leave her breakfast. She rolls her eyes and smiles to herself, grabbing her phone with one hand and the tea with the other for a nice, long sip.

The smile stays strong through all the snapchats of Pidge and Lance’s antics, through Shay confirming the time for study group, and all of Hunk’s advice on her science fair project. There’s a noticeable lack of messages from Keith, but that’s normal for him. Once he got busy at the garage he worked at, there was no way to interrupt him save waving a bag of ice in his face.

The strong tea helps clear her head and her mood, preparing her for another long day. She stands and takes the sandwich to the bathroom, to eat while she unbraids her hair and brushes it out.

Stuck in the corner of the bathroom mirror is a picture of her mother, not long before the diagnosis. It’s one of her favorites of her mother because it’s how she’d have wanted her to remember her, full of life and clueless to the thing that had been growing inside of her.

She shakes her head as she frees her long, silver blond hair from the braid, looking at her mother’s picture and taking deep breaths. She wasn’t like her mother, but she’d try to make her proud today. Allura would do something undeniably good today.

When her hair is loose and tangle free, she pulls it back into a loose bun, not minding when strands fall free. As long as most of it was out of the way, she’d be happy.

Back in her room, the tea has cooled a bit since she left it, but it’s still strong and sweet enough to chase the sandwich well. She had picked her outfit out the night before, after homework, so it’s as simple as taking them to the bathroom, brushing her teeth, and taking a quick shower to rinse off. Quick, easy, relaxing.

Her phone had gotten a few more messages while she was busy, namely from Lance and Pidge separately about some event they’d witnessed together and, finally, a ‘good morning’ from Keith. What’s surprising is the text from her father, letting her know that if she wanted to skip school and spend the day in his office, he’d be alright with it.

That was the first hint that something had happened.

She ignores it and finishes getting ready, applying chapstick and getting her things together, making sure all of her textbooks are in her bag and that she has a couple of things to eat for lunch. A simple routine, mostly silent, all relaxing.

There wasn’t any sense of urgency when Allura was alone, and these were the moments she lived for. She was a very busy person, in Leadership and several clubs, and balancing that with ROTC and the impending threat of college and the ever-present promise her license held. When she was alone, those things still existed, but she didn’t feel the need to pretend to be in control. If she wanted to fuss or cry or scream at the growing To-Do list of life, she had a chance. If she wanted to just curl up under her covers and ignore it until she was around her friends, it was alright.

But that was normal, her father had told her. When he was home, she didn’t need to be alone to be comfortable. She was happy just to spend time with him. But since he’d been promoted to mayor he’d hardly had any time to be alone himself, let alone with his daughter. But that was okay, because being alone was good enough for now. She was good at waiting.

Shiro sends the text to let her know he was out front, and Allura leaves her tea in the sink and her trash in the can, locking the door behind her and heading out to get into her friend’s car.

Shiro hands her a cup of coffee, and she had to laugh to herself about how well the men in her life know her as she thanks him and takes another sip.

It might be a little weird, being friends with a teacher, but she _was_ a senior and he’d only just joined the school. He’d graduated three years earlier, and helped her all the way through freshman year with patience comparable only to a rock, being gradually shaped and formed through thousands of years. She hadn’t been very good at learning things back then.

They clink cups and he turns onto the road.

“So, how did you sleep?” He asks, eyes on the road. “Nightmares?”

“Always. But it’s fine, I had a good morning. You?”

He shrugs. “I slept alright. Got a call early this morning though that, if I’d been able to get back to sleep, would have caused some.”

Allura frowns. “What? Was it about your brother? Your parents?”

“One of your classmates, actually.” He glances at her, which proves how serious it was. “Rolo?”

She nods. “Yes, he’s one of Lance’s friends. What about him?”

“He was attacked last night, apparently.”

Allura sits up straighter, settling her coffee in the cup holder. “What? Are you serious?”

“Yeah.”

“Is he alright?”

“No, he um, there was a small fire on the stove- forgot to take something off the burner, if I understand correctly, and by the time fire rescue showed up it was too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“To save him. He died last night.”

Allura swallows and sits back in her seat, trying to process it. “But I just saw him yesterday. He was going to be at Pidge’s party.”

Shiro shrugged. “Nothing to do about it now but remember him for who he was and try to be better, Allura. You know that as well as I do.”

“I do, it’s just a lot to take in. This explains father’s text.”

He glances at her. “What did he say?”

“He offered to let me stay in his office today. Oh, he’s going to be so stressed when he gets home tonight!”

Shiro reaches over to find her hand and squeeze it for a second comfortingly. “He’ll be fine. They’ll find the guy who did it, princess.”

She shook her head. “I still don’t like it…”

“Neither do I. He was a good kid. A bit too dependent, but good.”

“He was really funny too. Always knew when to crack a joke.”

Shiro nods. “Yeah, he did.”

Allura shifts, thinking about him. Rolo was a pretty easygoing guy, no enemies that she knew of besides maybe the freshman he’d refused to sell to. But that was fair, wasn’t it? Definitely not worth killing again, atleast in _her_ opinion. They fall silent, letting the gentle purr of the engine and sound of the wind be the background noise.

It isn’t a long drive to school, but it was a breath of fresh air to prepare for what was waiting when they pull into the parking lot.

“Don’t they have anything better to do?” She asks, disgusted, by the swarm of newstrucks and attempts at interviews. She steps towards Shiro and he pats her shoulder gently, sharing a look with her.

“We both know the answer to that.”

If it’s disrespectful to laugh in a situation like this, Allura would feel bad later, when there weren’t more reporters than A/B/C honor roll kids milling about.

Hunk falls into step with them, one hand in his pocket and the other rapid-fire typing on his phone. He has a headphone in one ear and one of his keychains dangling out his back pocket, the little pineapple one that Lance had picked up in a gas station when he was slumming the next state over with Rolo and Nyma and Pidge, doing whatever stupid stuff they liked to get into. Lance was like that, always getting little things that reminded him of the others, or that he knew they’d like, or that they mentioned wanting.

Allura shakes her head and links arms with Hunk silently, leaning her head onto his shoulder and letting his body heat ease her oncoming migraine.

“Hey Mr. Shirogane.” Hunk addresses the teacher on the sidewalk first, a smile in his tone and hand still moving. “Doing okay today? We aren’t still gonna have that test, are we?”

Shiro rolls his eyes. “No, we’re on a pep rally schedule to accommodate the police and grief counseling. Lance and Pidge will be having their counseling in the morning and questioning after lunch, while you, Allura, Keith, and the rest of the seniors and juniors will have their questioning in the morning and counseling either after lunch or, if they leave early, tomorrow morning.” He sighs and shifts back to a more casual tone. “And, Hunk, really, call me Shiro outside of class.”

Hunk shrugged. “Hey, it still feels kind of weird to call any teacher by anything other than ‘Mr.’ or ‘Ms.’ whatever.”

“What about Matt?” Allura pipes up, sipping her coffee more as she switches to standing on her own and ignoring the migraine. Her tank top is already getting bunched up beneath her sweater, and it’s going to be way too hot of an afternoon to survive in these pants and ankle booties. “You call him by his first name.”

“That’s different, I’ve known him since his edgy phase. When you know someone long enough, boundaries totally cease to exist.”

Allura rolls her eyes at the double standard. “Anyways. Ready to tackle police questioning? I’m still having trouble believing he’s dead.”

“Yeah, now who’s gonna drive Lance’s ass around.” Hunk jokes. Neither Allura nor Shiro have a good reply, and Hunk sighs. “I’m kidding. Lance’s driving phobia is not funny and I’m sad about Rolo. It just hasn’t sunk in yet, you know? I keep expecting Lance to text me and ask me to pick him up from some party because he got smas- uh, tired.”

Shiro takes his chance to roll his eyes. “I was a teenager. I was a _college student_. I’m not that out of touch.”

“Shiro,” Allura smiles, resting a hand on his elbow. “You wear tweed and corduroy.”

Hunk ‘ooh’s and she preens, flipping some hair over her shoulder. They make it to the main body of the school and Shiro heads for a different part of the first floor, past the atrium but not beyond the cafeteria, while Hunk and Allura go upstairs to find Pidge and Lance.

Somehow, she was still expecting Rolo to be standing with Lance, boxing him against the railing and talking shit. Somehow she expects Nyma to have stuck around, but she’s nowhere to be seen. Instead of their normal group setup, Lance is sitting on the ground with his face in his hands and Pidge next to him, one arm semi-permanently slung around his shoulders and a phone in her hand. As Allura and Hunk approach both of them put their phones away, and it doesn’t take a genius to realize that they’d been texting each other.

Lance looks like a wreck. Allura had noticed that his texts stopped after a certain point and not thought anything of it, but now it makes sense. When they get closer she shrugs off her backpack and settles between his legs to rub at his knees and Hunk takes his left side. Optimal friend surround-sound methods.

“I should have called him,” Lance sniffles, and Pidge frowns at him as she leans away to tie her hair back in what just might be the world’s tiniest ponytail. “I jus’ thought he was… you know.” Lance continues.

“Lance, there was nothing you could have done. You were at Pidge’s, eating nachos and screwing with Rover.” Hunk takes over the ‘don’t blame yourself’ speech. “I’m sure he would just be happy that you’re safe, dude. You were his world.”

Lance sniffs. “I think he’d prefer being alive.”

Pidge is leaning on him, and Allura shares a soft glance with her, easily understanding how inconsolable Lance must have been over the past couple of hours. Lance was practically next of kin for Rolo after the past few years, so they must have been woken up too by the bad news.

Allura squeezes his knees. “Yeah, but he’d be happy that you were okay. And what was that thing he always said? ‘I want people to have fun at my funeral, not cry?’ Why don’t we honor his wishes at Pidge’s party this weekend?”

Pidge frowns again. “Isn’t that going to be pretty rude? My party isn’t a big deal, I can put it off until after everything.”

Allura forces a smile. “But we already have all the booze for it. Why not make the most of it?”

“It is the kind of thing he would have wanted…” Lance blows his nose into the sleeve of his jacket before nodding. “Yeah, he’d like that.”

The day had started off pretty terribly for Pidge.

Lance and her had been curled up on her bed, finally asleep, by the time four am rolled around. Then Lance’s phone started ringing. Pidge woke up first, groggily, Rover whining at the foot of the bed. She tried shoving Lance awake but he just echoed the corgi’s whine, and Pidge leaned across and answered it for him.

“What do you want?” She had asked, barely coherent.

“Hello, is Lance McClain there?”

She had blinked herself a bit more awake. “Who’s asking?”

“The police. My name is Detective Zar and I have some bad news for him.”

Pidge had woken Lance up and they’d turned the phone onto speaker phone.

“Yeah?” Lance yawns. “What happened?”

“It’s your friend Rolo. There was an attack last night and he was killed.”

Neither of them had really processed it at first. They just sat there, blearily staring at each other with the phone between them.

Fast forward a few hours, and Pidge was really really tired.

Matt had insisted she come to school for… some reason. Something about being strong and doing it for Lance. She didn’t want to be there, and he didn’t either. Their grief was naked and it was just uncomfortable to let anyone else see it.

Lance was a complete wreck. It, for whatever reason, took forever for him to get to his counselor, and he spent the whole time crying and alternating between Pidge and Hunk’s shoulders, and when the tears ran out he just curled up in the uncomfortable chairs between them and played some puzzle game on Hunk’s phone.

Pidge was called up before Lance, and when she steps into Mr. Holgersson’s office she can’t help the prickles of discomfort in her stomach. But she sits down in front of him and sets her bag on the ground, fumbling with a fraying patch on her jeans.

“Ms. Holt.” He turns, eyeglasses half down his nose and her file in his hands. “I wish we were meeting under better circumstances, but,” He looks up at her and offers a sad smile. “I’m sure you understand why we must.”

“Because this is required?” She volunteers, scratching at her calf with the toe of her shoe. “Or because he was my friend?”

“Both, I suppose, but I care more about you, and the latter. I know this is going to sound bizarre, but how are you holding up?”

“Better than Lance.” She admits. “But… not very good either. I don’t want to be here today.”

Mr. Holgersson nods. “I understand, and you had every right to skip the day or even call your parents and go home now. Why did you come then?”

Pidge offers a joyless smile. “I’m, um, here for Lance. His parents would…” Her gaze flickers up for a second. “Freak if he missed after a sleepover so…” A shrug, and then a glance around the room. “You know how strict parents can be.”

“Yes. Are your parents very strict?”

“My dad, Dr. Holt, he’s your coworker.” Pidge kicks a leg out and rests the tip of her shoe against his desk. She wants to go running, but she can’t leave and she can’t ditch Lance either.

“Right.” There’s a beat as Mr. Holgersson taps a pen against a sheet of paper in his folder. “Would I be wrong in assuming that you don’t want to speak to me?”

“You wouldn’t be wrong.”

“Would you be offended if I recommended a friend of mine to speak to? Outside of school, of course. She’s removed from the situation, and I think that’s what you need right now. You need an outside perspective.”

Pidge raised an eyebrow as he places a stickynote in front of her. “Aren’t you supposed to be the outside perspective?”

“For most students? Yes. For you?” He smiles. “You’re one of Rolo’s friends. He was just in here last week. He’d changed his mind about college.” Mr. Holgersson sniffs and pulls off his glasses. “We talked for nearly an hour, filling out forms and getting things in order for him to go. He was very excited. He even agreed to get a tutor and raise his chemistry grade, said he knew just the person. I’m having trouble being impartial at the moment, and I’m sure you understand.”

Pidge shifts and leans forward, picking up the stickynote. “Hey, it’s okay. You’ll be okay.” She smiles. “He… wouldn’t have wanted you to cry. Or anybody. Rolo was a fun guy, and if he could see all this,” Pidge clears her throat. “He’d have hated it. I’ll talk to your friend, and I think maybe you’ll feel better after a couple drinks, looking up at the sky. Rolo loved space.” She stands and grabs her bag, rubbing a few betraying tears away. “I’m gonna go back to Lance, and talk to my dad about going home. You are right, we don’t need to be here right now.”

Mr. Holgersson nods and grabs a tissue to sneeze into, and Pidge leaves the room to let someone who didn’t know her friend as well as she did cry over him.

Stepping out into the lobby, however, shows that she’s already too late.

Keith is wearing grease-stained cargo pants and a plain black tee, looking like he were ready to go to work. She remembers that he had work this afternoon, but somehow seeing it just makes the day feel less real. It’s a fucking Wednesday. One of her best friends is dead, and it’s Wednesday, and everything feels wrong.

Lance is sitting up straight with this look on his face like disbelief and anger before they’re completely realized yet. Keith is saying something softly that she can’t hear, can’t make out, and he’s facing away from her so she can’t even tell what sort of face he’s making.

Pidge stands, frozen, bag half off her shoulder and lips barely parted. The hustle and bustle of the grieving underclassmen and staff grinds to a halt, and everyone looks at Lance and Keith.

“Don’t talk about him!” Lance’s voice is getting raised, and Hutch is turning worriedly away from his conversation with Ginger, but there’s a couch between the two sets of people. He’d never make it in time.

“I’m just trying to tell you that I’m sorry about what happened to him, McClain.” Keith replies, shifting, voice sounding sincere and soft. If Pidge takes even one step, she’s worried the tension will break.

“You don’t get to be sorry.” Lance’s hands tighten on the armrests. “You don’t get to talk to me right now!”

“Lance, calm down, me and Rolo had some problems but I’m as upset as you are.” Keith raises a hand and takes a breath. “Can’t we let it all be water under the bridge? I want us being friends, and I’m really tired of the rivalry we’ve got.”

Lance stands slowly, Pidge tenses, Hutch starts moving.

Lance decks Keith in the cheek, full with a loud _crack_ and the following chaos.

Matt was the one who offered to drive Lance home, when both his parents insisted they were busy. Lance was suspended for the next week and a half for ‘causing a scene’, ‘attacking a student’, and ‘time to grieve peacefully’. It was obvious that they were just not in the mood to deal with him too.

He didn’t care. Lance didn’t care about much right now. His skin feels like it’s boiling, and he can’t focus on anything. His friend is dead and he’s surrounded by people and he just needs to be alone.

Lance is sitting in Matt’s old corolla, backpack in the backseat with Matt’s while the older man talks quietly to the assistant principal who’d broken Lance and Keith’s “fight” up. It wasn’t a real fight, Keith hadn’t even fought back. He just accepted the blows and crashed into the couch and let Lance freak out on him.

Lance just needed to hit something really, really bad.

Matt gets a pat on the shoulder before he comes back to the car, sliding into the driver seat and looking Lance over. They’d known each other since forever, the McClains had moved into the house by the Holts when the youngest kids were both four and never separated since. Matt had been ten, the one to watch everyone and make sure they were okay. Lance’s eldest siblings, the twins, were in middle school at the time and ‘too cool’ to watch kids. The next oldest was seven and uninterested, and the youngest sibling was currently thirteen and sick at home with chicken pox, leading to Lance’s banishment from the house.

Anyone looking at Lance could see how upset he was. His knuckles are bruised and his cheeks tearstained, hair unkempt and chest rising and falling unevenly with just the effort of sitting still. Lance had no idea what Matt saw, but he turned towards the wheel and turned the car on and they just… left. Like that.

Lance leans his head out the open window and closes his eyes, letting the humid breeze wash over him. It was a gorgeous day, Rolo would have liked it.

The car ride is pretty silent, and the roads are as empty as they can get on a weekday. Matt is giving him space, and Lance is taking the time.

After a few minutes though, he pauses and cracks an eye open. They passed their neighborhood a few streets ago.

“Hey, where are we going?” He turns his head to look at Matt. “Our houses are that way.”

Matt smiles, one arm resting on the door and hair whipping softly in the wind. “I know.”

Lance blinks at him. “Are we not going home?”

“Nope.”

Lance frowns and looks back out the window. Matt takes the next turn and then gets onto the highway, and if it were anyone else there’d be alarms going off in his head.

The highway isn’t very full right now, there’s no reason for it to be, but it’s still a bit jarring. Nice too, because the breeze gets stronger and louder, drowning out his thoughts.

They go through, over the bridge and toward the beaches, but get off before then. Lance sends a small, confused glance at Matt when they turn onto backroads.

“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?”

“It’s a secret. Come on, relax. You’ve known me for how long?”

Lance relaxes, sighing. “Yeah I’ve known you forever, but I’m not really in the mood for long drives.”

“That’s a shame.” Matt turns down a dirt driveway, their destination obscured by a thick copse of trees. “Because I know what’ll make you feel better.”

Lance’s stomach twists. “I don’t want to feel better. I want to be angry, I want to something.”

“Well boo-hoo, too bad. Hitting something is what got you kicked out of class for the next two weeks.” Matt parks at the entrance to an enormous clearing, interrupted occasionally by massive oak trees and towering pines. The sun is only barely making it through the leaves to the uneven dirt and grass.

Matt turns off the car and gets out. Lance blinks before sitting up straight. “Matt? This isn’t funny. What are we doing?”

A beat passes with no answer, and then his door is being opened and his friend leaning in, too close and too much in his space. Lance’s breath gets stuck in his throat as another face is suddenly less than two inches from his own and a pair of hands on his hips, and he doesn’t move or do anything because he doesn’t know what to do.

But then his seatbelt is unbuckled and Matt is pushing it off of him, pulling him out of the car and pulling him to the driver’s side. “Get in.”

There’s nothing to do but get in.

Matt crosses back to the passenger side and buckles the seatbelt back over himself, leaning over Lance to get him strapped in. Lance is petrified just being in the driver seat, one hand braced on the top of the steering wheel and the other digging into the plastic siding on the door.

“Matt wh-“ He swallows. “What are we doing?”

“You are going to drive.”

Lance turns, eyes wide and mouth parted. “You’re kidding! No, I’m not!”

“Lance, you’ve been wanting to drive since you were four and a half, when I showed you and Katie that one racing movie.”

Lance shook his head. “But I don’t want to _now_. You know what happened last year, I can’t do it.”

“Lance, you have your permit already. We’ve been planning this for years. You begged me to teach you how to drive. You can’t give up just because of one little accident, and now is the best time to do it.”

“My friend just died-“

“And you need a distraction.” Matt pulls a water bottle with brown liquid in it from the center console and takes a long gulp before handing it to Lance. “This is a distraction that you can do. Driving takes a kind of focus and doesn’t let you think about anything else, where fighting is just throwing all your body and pain into something and getting hurt worse. Come on Lance, you know I’m right.”

Lance glances at the driving wheel and slowly unclenches his left hand, putting it on the wheel as well. “Fine, okay. What do you want me to do now?”

“Turn the car on, and keep your foot on the brake for now.” There’s a triumphant smile in Matt’s voice and Lance’s stomach does backflips. “Reach down to the gearshift and put the car in Drive.” 

Keith only lets himself breathe easily when the door to the nurse’s office shuts and he’s alone. He’s only a little bitter, he should have expected that. Of course Lance wouldn’t just forgive him, that wasn’t in the sophomore’s ability. Lance never let things go, and Keith guessed he would have to deal with that.

It had been stupid, anyways. Back in freshman year Rolo was the sophomore to go to for drugs and booze and anything you couldn’t get anywhere else. Keith was an idiot who wanted some moscato for a present for his mom and Rolo said he was an idiot and then they got in a fight. Simple, stupid kid stuff. Lance had been told some twisted version of it, had his own issues with Keith, when he came into the school and it was all so stupid. Keith was still in the group because Hunk and Allura knew what had happened, Rolo and Lance got into shit with him, and Pidge was the safe middleground.

He'd gotten used to it after a while.

The door opens again and Shiro slinks in, closing the blinds behind him. Keith smiles, lip and eyebrow split and teeth a little bloody and right eye blackened and a bit swollen.

“You’re alright?” Shiro asks, softly, crossing the room to the counter Keith is perched on despite repeated requests for him to not be up there.

Keith nods and spreads his legs, pulling Shiro between his thighs. “Tried to make right with Lance.”

Shiro sighs. “He’s just grieving, he’ll come around soon.”

Keith shakes his head as he rests his wrists on Shiro’s shoulders. “No he won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes I do.” And then he’s stopping the conversation, stealing a kiss even though his face hurts, sighing into it despite the pangs in his chest, pulling as tightly as he can at the strands at the back of Shiro’s hair.

Shiro makes a surprised grunt, one hand falling easily to Keith’s hip. He doesn’t participate much in the kiss beyond the bare minimum, but Keith is okay pulling his weight. It isn’t a long kiss, but it’s satisfying and nice and comforting. Keith needs an anchor to pull him through all of this, and his anchor is his secret boyfriend.

“Keith,” Shiro whispers when they separate, his eyes opening slowly. “It’ll be okay. You know that, right? Lance will come around, we both know him better than that. He’s going to need friends through this, and you can be a friend.”

“He doesn’t want me, Shiro. If he wanted friends,” Keith gestures past Shiro’s shoulder to the door. “There’s a school of them. Whatever I did to piss him off, he’s not coming back from that. He’s stubborn.”

Shiro pushes Keith’s hair out of his eyes and initiates eye contact. “Hey, look at me. He’s stubborn, but he’s going to let it go. You just need to talk to him. Give him some time, then talk to him. Pidge’s party? You’re going, right?”

Keith nods. “Yeah, everyone’s going.”

Shiro smiles. “Then talk to him then. Easy enough, right?”

Lance pulls the car into the Holt’s driveway, fingers shaking and foot locked onto the brake pedal. Matt reaches over and slowly guides his hand to the gearshift and puts the car into park. Then he’s turning the car off and taking the keys, eyes on Lance the whole time.

“You alright? That wasn’t so bad, was it?” He asks softly, despite having been there the entire time and obviously knowing that he wasn’t okay.

“No… it wasn’t.” Lance turns and glances at him. He still looks uncomfortable, but he looks a little relieved too. “It… wasn’t that bad.”

Matt smiles. “See, I told you it’d be alright.” He taps Lance’s nose with the one keychain he’d kept, the honeycomb one with a small bee made of yellow tourmaline. “You just needed a good teacher.”

Lance nodded and leaned over, hugging Matt. “Really, thank you. I… I did need a distraction too.”

He feels a hand pat his back, and when he pulls away Matt looks proud of him. “I know you pretty well. Now go on,” He jerks his head towards the towering hedge that hid Lance’s driveway on the other side. “Go home and get some rest. Katie and I will bring you your homework while you’re suspended.”

Lance grabs his backpack from the back seat and gets out of the car, heading towards the door. When he gets to it he drops his keys, and while fumbling for them he realizes something… he still wasn’t allowed to be in the house because of the chicken pox infested sibling. He puts his keys back in his bag and grimaces, turning to go back to Matt and beg him to let Lance stay again.

As he rounds the hedge he sees Matt passed out on the ground, a nasty bruise on his temple and a slash on his arm. Lance gasps and drops his backpack to help, but before he can do anything, a hand closes over his mouth and nose. Before he can do anything other than weakly hit at the wrists and try to kick behind him, spots begin appearing. Then, just like that, everything is black.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: gore is a thing in this, you've been warned

The cops leave the Holt household after Matt recounts the attack to Detective Zar and Officer Thace, with a promise to look into it and find the attacker. There’s suspicion that the person who killed Rolo and the person that attacked Matt might be the same person, but until more evidence comes out they just tell the family to be wary.

Mom stitches Matt up while Pidge stands across from him, eyebrows furrowed as she looks her brother over.

“You didn’t get robbed?” She confirms, for the fourth time.

“No, my wallet was in my bag.” He replies, for the fourth time.

“And you didn’t see any faces?”

“The guy was wearing a mask.”

Pidge makes a small thoughtful noise, sitting down next to him. “Sorry if I sound skeptical. You were just passed out, totally helpless, and this guy didn’t do anything. It doesn’t add up to me? I’m glad you’re okay, but I’m trying to figure out why.”

Matt slings the arm his mom isn’t working on over her shoulders. “Pidge, sis, it’ll be okay. Really. Leave it to the cops.”

“But what if the guy comes after you again? Or girl? We both know how many exes you have-“

“You can stop with that.” Matt waggles a finger. “My exes are harmless. Shiro is my ex. That rookie next to Detective Zar? He was one of my exes. I leave my exes happy and ready for the next relationship.”

Pidge stared at him. “If you think you aren’t a heartbreaker, you’re delusional.” She says slowly. “I mean, really? ‘Ready for the next relationship’?” She shakes her head. “I love you, but every fight you and Shiro had left him crying on Allura’s shoulder. I’m surprised that cop didn’t arrest you on sight, or something.”

Matt shoves Pidge a little bit, frowning at her. “Hey, I’m not that bad. Really. Besides, when’s the last time you were in a relationship?”

“Third grade for ten minutes to slum some raisins and orange juice off a classmate.” She preens. “And I’m happy with what I have now. I don’t want to to do romantic stuff right now.” She hops off the table, glancing over her mom’s shoulder to grimace at his stitches. “And maybe you should consider laying off. Now, Keith and I missed police questioning earlier so he’s driving me down to the station. Zar reminded me when he was here, but didn’t have the files on hand for Rolo’s case. See ya later.”

Before her brother can say anything, Pidge is grabbing her bag and throwing a sweater on and stepping outside to wait for Keith.

He’d texted her while Zarkon was there to see when would be good for her, and her ‘as soon as the cops leave my place’ had incited only the minimal amount of questions from her most understanding friend.

Despite knowing why Lance hated Keith and sympathizing with him, Keith was a close friend. They both greatly enjoyed conspiracy theories and tinkering, and would come to each other when they had need for a sounding board or help. Pidge’s future car, currently condemned to the garage due to its unfortunate bad transmission and decomposing fuel line, were an ongoing project of Keith’s that she paid for by the constant maintenance and repair of his laptop, which was only as battered as it was due to his inability to find a proper way to secure it when he was driving and testing different nuances that could only be understood from a computer with a direct connection to the ECU and the programs, each car-specific, that seemed to consume entire paychecks sometimes.

But she wouldn’t begrudge him of that. Nearly all the money she made from computer work- as she did have a wide clientell under the noses of school administration- seemed to go towards either more computer parts or hanging out with Rolo.

Looking back, Rolo had been an expensive friend to keep. She wouldn’t deny that. He always needed some amount of cash to compensate the amount of weed or alcohol they burned through on nights that he brought it out, or gas money when they would go on trips, or paying him back for little gifts that he or Lance would offer. It was understandable, but she was sure that after this life would be a bit more simple.

She hadn’t been there for Keith and Rolo’s fight, but even she knew that they’d gotten over it by the time her and Lance joined the school. When they’d met Rolo, though, that had been the start of the real rivalry. Keith and Lance.

Why did her two closest friends have to be complete idiots?

Keith pulls around the corner in a dark blue car that she’s never seen before, and she gets in immediately.

He gives her a quick once over before starting the car and pulling back out of her driveway. He hated staying at her house for long periods of time, and she didn’t blame him. It would be awkward for anyone to visit the house of the guy whose boyfriend they’d stolen.

“How’s Shiro?” She asks, still a bit pleased that only four people knew that particular can of worms. Her, Keith, Shiro, and Matt. Easily contained. The two vicious boyfriends, the prized boyfriend trophy, and the neutral observer, her. Well it hadn’t actually gone down like that and she’d found out a week after it happened, but she liked to pretend anyways.

“Absolutely delusional. He still thinks Lance is going to forgive me.”

Pidge buckles in as they’re about to leave her neighborhood, pulling the laptop up from the backseat for something to do. “He might, if you apologize for what you actually did.”

“And what did I do?”

“Up to Lance to tell you.” She shrugs.

Keith groans. “And he hates my guts and won’t talk to me, even when I’m trying to make it right.”

“Being fair, you could have waited a little bit.”

“I wanted him to know I was here for him and stuff.” Keith glanced over at her as he makes a turn. “That if he needed someone to vent to about how unfair life was for taking Rolo, or whatever, or even if he just needed a ride, that I’d be there for him.”

Pidge nodded. “I know that, and you know that, but he’s very firmly of the opinion that until you apologize, you’re the enemy. I don’t blame him for being upset. You did kind of do an upsetting and mildly traumatizing thing.”

“Do you enjoy torturing me and being the only one who knows what goes down at any given point in time?” Keith had to slow down to avoid a car that was swerving into his lane and grunted in annoyance. Pidge noticed one of the stats on the moniter, something that he’d told her meant ‘small explosions in motor’ spike, and she paled. “Hey hey, don’t do that. The um, motorsplosion number didn’t like that.”

“Huh?” He tries to look over but she pushes his face so that he’s looking at the road again with a small screech. “Fuck- fine, I’ll look later. Motorsplosion?”

“Yeah like, small explosions… in the motor.” She explained lamely. “Do I expect you to remember my technobabble?”

“No, fine. I’ll look later.” He repeats as he flicks his turn signal on for a second, turning sharply onto the street that led to the police station, in a move that probably would have gotten him a ticket. “Assuming they haven’t heard anything from Lance that’ll make them think I did this, and lock me up.”

Pidge blinks. “You think Lance would have said that-“ She lets out a short laugh. “What? Please, you only need to worry if you actually did it.”

Keith doesn’t answer, easing off the gas slowly.

“Did you do it?”

“No…” Keith chews on his lower lip, which does not look very much like a motion someone who wasn’t guilty would do.”

Pidge’s eyes furrow and she runs her nails nervously over the plastic next to the mousepad on the computer. “Is that a, like, ‘no’ for ‘no, of course not, I’d never kill him’ or is that a ‘I’m hiding something’ ‘no’?”

“It’s an ‘I made a mistake but I didn’t kill him’ no.” Keith turns into the parking lot. “Hey, we can talk about it after though. I didn’t put the knife in him, and that’s all that matters.” Then he parks and gets out of the car.

It doesn’t comfort Pidge at all, whose heart is hammering in her chest.

Pidge is texting Hunk a ‘if I don’t contact you again by 9, call the cops’ as she hurries to catch up to Keith. He hadn’t even waited for her, completely forgetting her short legs, and if she wasn’t on track at school she’d hate him a little bit. 

Stepping inside is weird. It’s a contained chaos, with some kid from her math class getting lead back in ‘cuffs and one of the ladies from the grocery store getting out. She didn’t even want to know why they were there.

The officer at the desk says the detective can only see one of them at a time, and Pidge volunteers to go first. She doesn’t want to be waiting longer than necessary to talk to the man. She still has to wait for a minute in the examination room- something about privacy and not wanting the details of the case to get out. She understands that, there’d been a couple reporters being led out by Thace.

She plays on her phone, doing some random puzzle game and ignoring the text that causes her phone to buzz aggressively on the table. When the door opens she closes the app and opens her text messages with three quick taps, standing then and offering a hand to the Detective. He shakes it and they sit down, her accepting the mug of water and him laying down a couple of files and a pen with a small black cat charm hanging off of it. If it were any other time, she would have snickered, but right now she was just grateful for the little bit of mundanity it added. They were there to talk about her dead friend, but the Detective was a person too. And, if the cat hair on his suit and the cat decal on the mug were anything to go by, he was a cat person. Like Lance.

“Alright, Ms. Holt.” He smiles. “As you know, I’m Detective Konnie Zar. I’ve been nicknamed Zarkon around the station, both because of my names and because-“

“Of that old Emperor from that one cartoon?” She volunteers. He smiles.

“Yes. I watched it when I was your age, believe it or not. Now, about Rolo.” Pidge nods. “Do you think you can handle seeing a picture of him, or would you rather remember him as he was?”

She pauses, tapping at the table and thinking. She knows that Rolo might have been a ‘don’t cry at my funeral’ kind of guy, but he was also the kind of guy who wanted justice. Lance wouldn’t have been able to handle seeing the picture, but she could be strong and do that much. Keith’s words echo in her head- _I didn’t put the knife in him, and that’s all that matters_. How had he known it was by a knife? She didn’t even know the specifics of how he’d died, and she and Lance had both been there for the call.

“I can handle it.”

He nods and slides a glossy 8x11 out, showing a lovely aerial view of her friend’s corpse.

Pidge gasps and covers her mouth as she looks at it, soaking in the gory details. Rolo had died with his eyes open, mouth parted and blood bubbling out of the side of it. He had multiple rips and tears in his shirt- oh how unlucky it was that he’d worn white- and he’d been partially gutted. She could see the pale pink swells of his intestines through his shirt.

Pidge stands and races for the trashcan to retch, yanking the neckhole of her sweater down and away from her neck. The detective follows quickly and holds her bangs away from her face, rubbing her back soothingly. When she’s done, the tears start flowing again, and he offers her a handkerchief to rub her face with and cry into.

She hadn’t wanted to cry, but as he hides the picture, she feels justified in doing so.

“S-someone did that to him,” She manages, hiccupping. He pushes the water towards her and she sips at it. “Why would anyone, he was a good guy. He had his fuckups but he didn’t do anything _that_ bad.” She rubs at her eyes with the heels of her hands, abandoning the handkerchief on the table.

“Did any of those fuckups create any enemies?”

Pidge opens her mouth, only to be interrupted by another buzz of her phone. “Can I look at those? I’m sorry, it might be Lance- McClain, you know.” The detective nods and she unlocks her phone.

There weren’t any texts from Lance, which is surprising. She hadn’t heard from him since he… well, since he punched Keith that morning. There’s a text from Hunk confirming her request, and three from Rolo’s phone.

_7:34 PM – Talking to police, princess?_

_7:36 PM – Well, funny story._

_7:37 PM – If you tell anyone what Mullet told you on the way over, I’ll gut you like the spoiled pig you are._

Pidge, to her credit, doesn’t react that badly. Her eyes widen and her lips part a little bit, but she swallows it down and offers the Detective a fake smile. “Can I ask you a question?”

He nods. “Yes, I think so. I don’t see any reason why not. So long as you know that I might not be authorized to answer it…”

She nods. “Yes, yes, I get it. Um, where is Rolo’s phone? Did he, um, have it?”

The Detective shakes his head slowly, flipping a page to scan a list. “No, it’s one of the things I was going to ask you about. It wasn’t at the scene and some of the other students said he ran a business through it, so it would be very suspicious if it just disappeared.” He raised his eyebrows. “Right?”

“Yeah, Ro was a small time drug dealer and shit.” Pidge offers a tense smile. “Not trying to be crass here but, well, it was no secret. And he wasn’t always the nicest guy, but I couldn’t tell you a list of people he’d angered if I tried.”

The detective hums, leaning back slightly. “We knew about the drugs. He’s a repeat offender, did a semester in Juvie in sixth grade.”

“That’s not a good idea, that just teaches kids how not to get caught.”

“True, we’re trying not to do it very much anymore. If he hadn’t died, I’m sure your friend would have made it to college before some tattletale rich student ratted him out to get out of a D.U.I.” He shrugs. “Then it would have been minimum five years jail time, and from there who knows. I’m not sure it matters now. What did your friend say?”

“Hm? Excuse me?” Pidge paled a little bit, hand sliding up to cover her phone. “What do you, um,” She laughed once, shrugging. “That doesn’t matter, is that part of the um?”

He laughed as well, rolling his eyes slightly and reaching up to scratch at his chin, and his massive beard, with the cat-top pen. “Relax, Ms. Holt. I’m just trying to be friendly. I understand how stressful this ordeal must be. I was in the army for twenty years, and I lost a lot of friends. I came back to my hometown and became a police officer because I was tired of barrack beds,” Pidge laughs, covering her mouth with her hand. “And because I wanted to make sure no one else lost as many as I have, or that the ones I couldn’t save would atleast find justice. I’m going to make sure I find justice for Rolo and that this doesn’t happen to anyone else.”

All she can do is nod.

Allura passes Keith on her way into the station and doesn’t really want to know why he and Officer Haggar were debating the qualities and differences between using this thing and that thing on… She hadn’t caught enough of the conversation to remember, think about ever again, or care. She does notice, from the monitors in the middle of the breakroom, that Pidge and Detective Zarkon were talking, but she doesn’t pay that much mind either.

Instead she leans onto her step-father’s side and closes her eyes, letting him wrap his arm around her comfortingly.

“Your dad shoulda taken a sickie.” Coran sighs, and Allura nods next to him. “Two attacks in one day? One had a roach by ‘im, an the other was a teacher.”

“What? Which one, are they okay?”

“Yah, it’s your friend’s brother. He’s fine, just an old cut here and head bang there. Just glad he was alone at the time, didn’ have to worry about anyone else getting hurt.”

“Friend’s brother… Do you mean Pidge and Matt Holt?”

“Yeah them. They’re rellies, right?”

Allura nods distractedly as she pulls out her phone to text Pidge and make sure they were both okay. At the positive response, she sighs and puts it away. “Yeah, and he’s okay. Did you find anything weird about…” She swallows. “Rolo’s body?”

Coran glances around the room before pulling her back towards the corner and sitting down, hiding his mouth behind a large mug. “You know I shouldn’t be telling you stuff like this. No matter how big your puppy eyes get.”

“But I’m not using puppy eyes!” She replies, as she uses puppy eyes. “I’m just asking about a dear friend, trying to understand something terrible that’s happened to him. I’m trying to cope!”

“Cope.” Coran narrowed his eyes playfully. “You seem right fine to me.”

“That’s because I’m obviously bottling up my feelings and will let them out later, at home, in the form of home decorating, where I will replace all the curtains and dishtowels with knitted abstract art, and when I run out of my own good yarn I will use your good yarn, and then Father’s, and then I’ll move on to the-“

“Stop, I can’t handle anymore!” He looks, honestly, a little sick. “Gah, why would you say that?”

“Because I knew it would bother you. Now seriously, talk to me. Did he atleast… go painlessly?

Coran shakes his head as he glances around. “Ranger was stabbed multiple times before, um, drowning in a pool of his own blood as he unconsciously bled out in his kitchen. His Uncle was boozing around town and didn’t get there until late the next day, and his phone wasn’t found at the scene.”

“His… phone? Like Rolo’s?”

“Yep. Nowhere to be found, and we combed that house. Found every order of pot and whatever you kids do nowadays for the next semester, found more booze than should be allowed in a house with a…. young adult, I guess? He was nineteen, Allura.”

She shrugged. “He was Lance’s friend. I just…” She chewed on her bottom lip. “You know. I wanted to know. For him.” She sends him a quick ‘can we talk?’ text. “Thank you for telling me. You’re too good for us.”

Coran shrugged, holding up a fist and smiling. Allura giggles and bumps it with her own, both of them making soft explosion noises after they pulled their fists back.

###### 

Hunk smiled and pulled Shay into a kiss as he let her into his house, glad for the distraction from Rolo. She smiles into the kiss and pulls back after a minute, eyes kind and face truly a sight for sore eyes.

“How are you holding up? I know how hard it is on you.” She says, petting his cheek gently. He leans into her callouses, sighing softly.

“I’m fine, just worried about Pidge and Lance. Lance got in a fight this morning, and Pidge… She’s hiding it pretty well, but I know it’s messing with her and I’m worried.”

“Do you think they’ll be alright?” She asks, pulling back to let him close the door on the warm night air, blocking the breeze and bugs alike. “Or that she will talk to you?”

Hunk shrugged, leading her into the living room. “I can hope, but we both know how useful that’ll be. Pidge has this habit of either waiting until the last moment to talk about things that bother her, or waiting until she gets piss-drunk to babble to me or Lance and good luck to us trying to remember it in the morning, because we’re always long gone when she starts talking.”

Shay chuckles a bit, reaching up to tuck a piece of fabric back into her headscarf. “Is it like pulling teeth?”

“It’s like pulling teeth from cement with tweezers.” He pauses. “Wait, no. Toothpicks. Trying to pry a tooth out of cement with toothpicks.”

“I’m sure it won’t be that bad. It is you we are talking about, and you can do anything. I know it.” She puts a finger to his chest, and Hunk sighs, letting himself be pushed onto the couch. She joins him and they shift so that he’s laying, head on her stomach and her arm resting on his shoulders.

“Thank you for believing in me, but the group… You mostly stick with Rax and your cousins, so you wouldn’t get it, but we’re starting to drift. Keith is hardly in it, Rolo’s dead, and Lance is ignoring everyone since he got suspended. Allura is more focused on college and her dad, and only me and Pidge are trying to do anything to keep us… together, I guess?”

She hums sympathetically and starts running her fingers through his hair. “Is that why Lance is ignoring Rax’s messages too?”

“What?” Hunk’s eyebrows rose despite him closing his eyes. “He isn’t even talking to Rax?”

“No. They were supposed to watch some movies this afternoon, but Rax remembered that Lance wasn’t allowed in his own house- something about disease- and Rax said that Pidge thought Lance was at home. He did not want to worry anyone, but I think I am beginning to…” She pauses with her thumb brushing the back of his ear, shaking her head. “No, I’m sure Lance is just grieving. He does do this, right? Disappear for no reason, days at a time?”

Hunk hummed. “Usually he did that with Rolo.”

“Perhaps he is with Nyma? She was remarkably absent today.”

Hunk mulls it over. “I don’t know, I’ve never really been able to figure her out. She seems like a party girl, but sometimes she’ll just… Do something off. It’s pretty disconcerting.”

“I’m sure it’s fine, maybe she’s just antisocial.”

Hunk wants to believe that it’ll be the case.

“Do you want to do something?” He glances through his lashes. “I don’t want us to just sit around and wonder if our friends are okay. We could always do something really fun…” He waggles his eyebrows.

Shay giggles and cups his face in her hands. “And what do you have in mind?”

“Scrabble?

Keith mouths at Shiro’s jaw, sliding his hand under the man’s shirt and trying to push his thigh farther between Shiro’s legs. Shiro is rubbing against him and making small grunting noises, easily the loudest between them. Which was really saying something because they both knew how to be _silent_.

Keith is trying hard not to think about how Lance had looked that morning when he was crying, trying not to think about Pidge’s face in the car, trying not to think about the conversation between him and the detective. Was it too much to ask to not think about any of those things?

Apparently, yes. But he presses his thigh up and makes Shiro whine softly, pushing his shirt open and rubbing his hands- god, when had he last washed them?- over Shiro’s stomach, probably getting gravel sand and the last remnants of oil all over them. He groans, wishing that this fact would make blood travel anywhere but his dick.

Shiro pulls back, shifting awkwardly to try to hide his own erection, to bite his lip awkwardly, to look like something straight out of a porno. If Keith were the type to save moments, he’d snap a picture, but he knows he wouldn’t be allowed. If Shiro didn’t stop him, he’d stop himself.

“Keith, are we sure it’s a good idea to be doing this in my classroom?” He asks, fumbling with his shirt buttons. “If we get caught…”

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll get in big trouble.” Keith sighs, rubbing his face, being careful of the bandage over his now-more-crooked nose and the butterfly bandage keeping his split eyebrow together. “But what if we’re quick? It’s almost midnight, and it’s a Wednesday. No one stays at a school this late on a Wednesday, Shiro.”

As if to answer him, Shiro’s phone dings. He finishes buttoning up his shirt with a tired stare at Keith.

“It’s Iverson. He wants me to pick something up, something about a project we’re doing together. Stay here?”

Keith throws on a tee, hiding his undershirt and his disappointment. “It’s too late at night to split up. If this was a horror movie, I wouldn’t want to be the idiot that stays behind and dies.”

Shiro groans and fixes his hair as best as he can. “This isn’t a horror movie, Keith, this is my job.”

“Yes, and I’m your student. Hey, after you get the project from Iverson, think you could show me a little math problem? One on one? I’m having trouble figuring out-“

Shiro kisses him to shut him up and it, surprisingly, works.

They walk through the dark hallways together, the silence eerie in the school. Keith can see the sky through the windows, feel the breeze through the empty halls, and wishes that the school wasn’t so open. It takes a few minutes to reach Iverson’s room, and when they get there he suddenly has a bad feeling.

“Wait- Shiro, shouldn’t the light be on, if he’s really in there?” Keith whispers.

“What? Keith, that’s ridiculous. Iverson just likes to have the light off sometimes, to save on the electric bill. Now, if you’re coming in you need to act less suspicious.”

Keith bites back an annoyed retort at that and watches Shiro unlock the door.

Inside is completely black other than the sliver of light from the supply closet. It does little other than cause shadows, and Keith gets goosebumps from how upset he is by this. There’s no sign of the teacher, and with each step Shiro takes Keith finds his eyes scanning the floor for traps. Keith notices him move by a desk and screams in surprise, sending Shiro straight onto the floor…

Shiro’s back aches, but what’s much, much worse is what he notices when his eyes adjust.

The floor beneath him is sticky and dark, rubbing onto his clothes and making an uncomfortable feeling beneath his hair. The ceiling seems far away and he’s dizzy, the place where his head hit the ground is practically throbbing.

The desks are tall and blocky, the rest of the room starting to turn from pure blackness to fuzzy shapes.

He turns his head, feeling something there, and comes face to face with Iverson.

His eyes were wide open and unmoving, his nose and cheeks and chin smeared with blood. Well, if he still had a chin it would be, but his throat and collar are.

His jaw seemed to have been cut off. The roof of his mouth and teeth are visible, his tongue lolling over the raw muscle left behind and the top of a… Shiro isn’t sure what it is, but something round attached to the neck of a bottle, shoved down his throat and forcing it to bulge out disgustingly.

Shiro feels a wave of nausea and scrambles to get up, his eyes burning and throat aching in sympathy.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> easily my least fave chapter so far aaa  
> sorry if it seems too short and rushed, it felt rushed!! i realized as i was writing it that my plans for chapters 3 and 4 didn't have enough meat in them, so instead they got smushed together and were still short.  
> this is uploaded mid hurricane, will post the sister chapter when i actually have power lmao

“Good morning.” Mayor Alfor coughed twice into his fist, his kind eyes scanning the room. Reporters had gathered at town hall for a statement after news of a second murder, so close to the first, was spread.

“Two nights ago a teen, Rudolfo Ranger, known to his friends as ‘Rolo’, was murdered in his home. Last night a teacher at the school Ranger went to, Wade Iverson, was found by a coworker, also murdered. We are still gathering information and clues, but at the moment we have not narrowed down any suspects. Out respect for the deceased I’m going to have to ask for no probing into the cases by outside forces. The deaths were very traumatic and have rocked this quiet community, but we have our best officers on the case.” Alfor swallows and shifts, glancing over his shoulder at Detective Zar. “I hold them in my highest esteem, and trust that they will bring justice from these horrors. I won’t be accepting many questions so, you, in the blue?” He points at a woman in the front row.

“Yes. Is it believed that the two deaths were connected? Were the methods similar?”

“No, miss, they were not. We don’t have enough information yet to make assumptions. Um, you, in the green?”

A man in bright green nods and sniffs. “Are the attacks isolated to the school? Did Ranger have any enemies?”

Shiro shakes his head and turns away from the display, skin still crawling in every place it had come in contact with Iverson’s blood. He hadn’t been allowed to shower yet, just given a loose t-shirt some officer from the academy had left. Shiro had never been a fan of press conferences, or whatever this was, but the longer it went on the less comfortable he was.

“Hey, Thace.” He taps a knuckle against the officer’s elbow. “Can I get out of here yet? I may not be working today, but I really don’t want to be gross all day, you know.”

Thace eyes him, giving him a bit too long of a once-over. Well, maybe it was allowed considering their history and what almost happened between them once before they separated, before Shiro got with Matt, before Thace had his own fling with the other teacher, before everything got so complicated and messy.

Thace offers a smile and gives him a pat on the back. “Hey, get a shower and some rest. If you see anything, you’ve got my number.”

Shiro nods. “Thanks man, I will.”

And with that, he gets out of the uncomfortable situation and tries not to let the door hit him on the way out.

He… should probably call Keith. Keith had stayed home, had been able to get out with a third of the questioning that Shiro had. Keith had also been ignoring his texts, which was weird and awkward, especially because usually he couldn’t get the teen to leave him alone. Shiro hikes his bag a little higher and digs out his phone, easily finding the contact and clicking on it to call.

A few rings later, he’s halfway across the parking lot and there’s no answer. Shiro sighs and waits for the answering machine to come in.

“Hey, it’s me.” He swallows, wincing at the rough tone. Shiro would have to remember to drink some water when he got home, his throat sounded pretty rough from the night of talking and endless caffeine. “I was just trying to check in. I know you’re probably pretty upset, pretty mad at me for not listening to you, and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have just brushed your worries off. Um…” He coughs, fumbling in his pocket for his keys. “Can you come over later? I just want to talk, you know, about… this and that I guess?”

Shiro hangs up the phone as he unlocks his car and slides in, setting his bag in the passenger seat and sighing. He wasn’t made for relationships, and stepping forward in one wasn’t his expertise.

He leans forward and lets his head thump against the steering wheel. What is he going to do? It wasn’t just his own dreams that Iverson’s mutilated face would haunt, but Keith’s too. It wasn’t just himself that was affected by this, but Keith and Allura and everyone else.

Shiro sighs and opens his eyes slowly. “That settles it. At Pidge’s party… We’ll all talk about some serious stuff.”

He sits up straight and the backseat creaks, and then there’s a rag of sharp smelling chemicals covering his mouth. Shiro struggles against it, his surprised yelp muffled by the cloth and struggles futile. After a minute or so, his vision darkens and he blacks out.

“Hey, guys.” Pidge steeples her fingers as she steps up to the table where Hunk, Keith, Shay, Allura, and Nyma are sitting, in a bizarre stroke of luck, studying. And not even fake studying, either.

Allura is the one who looks up, eyes tired but attentive. She was always so good at making time for everyone, and there was nothing Pidge didn’t appreciate about that. Say what you might about teenagers and their pettiness, but there was a certain level of maturity that she knew was present and that influenced them.

Pidge shifted and rested a hand on the table to get their attention. “Okay. Well, it’s about my party.” That gained a glance from Hunk, to show he was listening, and Shay politely looking up. “My dad is pretty upset about what’s happened this week, so he asked me to cancel it.”

“What?” Allura’s mouth opened in surprise, and everyone abandoned what they were doing. “No, you were so excited!”

“Yeah I was looking forward to the mental break.” Keith admits, and Pidge winces, remembering the one am call to babble about Iverson’s body and how upset and lonely he felt. “He can’t just do that. If you need a new place to hold it I’m open.”

Even Nyma leaned forward on her arms and frowned, upset by the news.

Well, that made her feel a little better. Pidge takes a breath. “But I haggled with him. So it’s not cancelled, just moved forward two weeks. He thinks that’ll be enough time for everything to calm down and be safe again, and I totally agree.”

Nyma nods understandingly, dark eyes trained on Pidge. “So we’re just moving the date?”

Hunk groans in relief. “Guys, we so need to have that party. If we’d had to really cancel I would have been so disappointed.”

Pidge sits down, squeezing him into Shay’s space more. “I’ve got it handled. Really, I’m not going to let a few hiccups ruin this.”

Allura glances at something past them, over their heads, and frowns. “Is that Rax? He certainly looks upset.”

Hunk and Shay share a look before looking over their shoulders, something obviously crossing both their minds. Shay lifts a hand and furrows her eyebrows, jewelry clanking. “Brother?”

“Not now Shay.” He growls, stepping past her to slam a fist on the table and point at Keith. “You, what did you do to Lance?”

Keith’s eyes widen almost comically before they’re narrowing in surprise and his shoulders straighten defensively. “I didn’t do anything to Lance. If you remember,” He points at his bruised, crooked nose and the split eyebrow that had scabbed up in the night. “I’m the one who got hit in that fight.”

“He hasn’t replied to my calls, texts, snaps, nothing! His mom hasn’t heard from him either.” Rax crossed his arms and breathed out through his nose. “So what about it? You’re the only one who has it out for him.”

“I don’t-“ Keith stood up. “Fuck you. I don’t have shit out for anyone, okay? I was trying to make peace, not start a fight. Your boyfriend’s the one who started shit.”

Rax let his fists drop and puffs his chest out, crowding into Keith’s space. Instantly, everyone is on their feet, trying to grab fistfuls of clothing and drag the boys away from each other.

“Rax do not do this!” Shay pleads while Allura hisses “This isn’t worth it, he’s a wrestler Keith!”. Everything falls, however, on deaf ears as Keith sneers up and Rax bares his teeth.

“Lance wouldn’t run off without a good reason.”

“Lance is a melodramatic little bitch.”

Rax lifts a fist, and then another fight breaks out.

There’s surprised shouts and grunts, fists and legs moving wildly as the fight goes immediately to a floor scuffle with plenty of other bodies trying to separate them. Other people begin to flock and phones are whipped out to catch it on camera, until finally Hunk and Shay manage to yank Rax back while Mr. Sendak, whom the crowd had parted for like the red sea, grabs Keith under the armpits.

It’s him, Mr. Sendak, who truly stops the commotion, with a hearty yell. “THE NEXT STUDENT WHO LIFTS A FIST WILL BE EXPELLED.”

Keith sank in his arms like a pouting sack of flour, and Rax had to yield to Shay pinching his ear forcefully and beginning to scold him for picking a fight.

Pidge had gotten kicked in the stomach and is standing by Nyma, leaning on her and trying not to think about everything that had happened. After a long moment, she groans. “Fuck it. I’m calling Matt and going home.”

That evening, Mayor Alfor comes on and interrupts every new station with an important announcement.

“This afternoon two more bodies, freshman Lisa Cossack and ‘Rocky Queequeg were found, killed and hidden, in the creek behind the school by the track team. We are now considering the killer, seen on security footage at the school as a person of unknown height or build that was in a raincloak and white mask, armed, dangerous, and working alone. We do not know anything else at this time, but for now we are imposing a ten o’clock curfew for all minors, and suggesting it for the adults. Please, keep your families safe.”

Lance woke up, head swimming, to a song by the Ting Tings, of all bands. If he squeezes his eyes shut and hums with it, the name almost comes to- oh. There it is. ‘Shut up and let me go.’

He tries to sit up with the jaunty music and low voice blasting, only to find himself already sitting up. He’s tied to a chair, and when he cracks open his eyes, he sees he’s in a garage and facing the rolled down door.

“Hello?” He calls, craning his neck but finding himself unable to see past the high back. “I’m- ah- fuck. What’s going on?” Wow, really clever. He shifts, chest starting to rise and fall more quickly. He’s panicking bad. “Where am I? Hello? Help!”

He notices that he’s been stripped to his tshirt and boyshorts, leaving his legs and arms cold and bare to the rough rope and, when he pulls on them, zipties underneath. It seemed like someone had been very thorough.

Just as Lance is preparing to scream again, sure that someone will hear him, there’s a flash of movement to his left.

“Can you stop screaming? It’s really getting on my nerves.” Nyma sighs, holding a kitchen knife in one hand and an apple in the other.

“Nyma? What the hell- can you please untie me?”

“Why would I do that?” She swallows and stands in front of him, one hand on her hip and her eyebrows high. “Hmm?”

“Because- um- because we’re friends?” He remembers, suddenly, that Matt had gotten hurt before he’d presumably gotten kidnapped. “Wait, what happened to Matt? Is he okay? Nyma this isn’t funny, Rolo just died.”

“Yeah? Well, princess,” Lance flinches and yanks at his bonds, rubbing against raw skin. “Rolo’s not the only one. Can’t wait to see what happens to you, pretty boy.”

“What do you mean Rolo isn’t the only one?” Lance’s heart skips a beat as the song pauses for a second. “What did you do to Matt? Let me go!”

Nyma laughed and slid into the chair with him, straddling his lap and grabbing his chin roughly. Lance clenches and unclenches his fists, struggling to get away from him. “Let’s think…” She grins evilly. “No.”

Allura gets the call at about five am, since Officer Thace was one of her friends as well as Shiro’s. He was the same age as Shiro and, while not being as close, was always willing to give her a ride out of a rough situation or back her up when she felt unsafe.

He sounds upset when she picks up.

“Allura, I got bad news.”

Her heart drops into the pit of her stomach. “What is it?”

“Shiro was found twenty minutes ago, out at the soccer field at the school.”

She chokes on nothing. “Is, please tell me he’s alright.”

“He isn’t. They rushed him to the hospital, I think he’s going straight for surgery. Uh, it’s really bad though.”

“What is? What happened to him?” Allura sits up, tears already bubbling up. Why was this happening?

“His arm was cut off. Right above the elbow. He only barely missed bleeding out, we’re lucky the kids found him when they did.”

She gags a bit at the thought, unable to think of Shiro having gone through something like that. “Is he alright? Is he going to make it? Was he awake?”

“I hope so, I think so, and no. He did have a- I shouldn’t be telling you this. I really shouldn’t be telling you this.”

“Come on.” Allura gets out of bed and begins to pace. “I can handle it Thace.”

“There was a sign from the killer. It wasn’t anything in words, but it was a big glossy picture of you and your friends, from the Halloween party last year. Rolo’s face was scratched out, Shiro’s arm was cut out of the picture, and Lance and you both had big question marks on your faces.”

“What the hell could that mean?” Allura ran a hand through her hair and stepped out into the hallway. “Lance isn’t talking to anyone, but that… He’s fine, he has to be.”

“Listen, from me to you, we can’t put out anything for him, but it’s pretty concerning. If I were you, I’d find him, and figure out who would have hated Rolo and Shiro enough to do this to them.”

Allura nods. “Yeah… Hey, is school open today?”

“No, it’s closed until Monday. And if anyone asks, you didn’t hear this from me, right?”

She smiles. “Yeah, of course. I’m gonna get dressed. Keep me posted on the surgery?”

“Yes ma’am.” She can just imagine him mock saluting as he hangs up, and for once Allura is glad to have goofy friends.

She sets her phone on the bed and shakes her head though, returning to the problem at hand. Shiro was hurt. More than that, his arm had been cut off and he’d been attacked. That was five people in two days, and nothing she could do about it.

“Who’s going after us?” She whispers to her room.

The phone rings again, and she answers it without looking. “Thace, did you forget something?”

“Eh, not Thace.” An unknown voice comes through the line, followed up by a chuckle. It sounds tinny, almost as if it were through a bad cell connection or something.

“My bad, I didn’t check the caller ID. Who is it?” Allura bites her lip, internally screaming. How could she have just assumed? Her head was anywhere but here.

“Let’s just call me a friend. How did you like the display on the soccer field?”

“Excuse me? How do you know about that?”

“Because I’m the one who put it there.”

She gasps and her eyes widen, hand coming up to clap over her mouth.

The caller chuckles. “Didn’t expect that, did you? Well there’s a lot you aren’t expecting, and this is nowhere near over.”

“My father is the mayor, when I tell him that I got this call he’ll have the entire police force looking for you. Give me one good reason why not to do that.”

“Because then you’ll find out the hard way which of your friends has a knife to their throat.” There’s a noise and an upset choking sound. “Don’t worry, they have a nice little gag on, so they’re not going to cry out and give it away. So isn’t that a good reason, princess?”

Allura tries to breathe between her fingers, eyes trained on her bed. “I- um- I, w-what do you want from me?”

“I want you to be the final girl of this horror movie. Sound good?”

Allura is shaking her head, horrified, even as she swallows. “Why me?”

“Mm, because you’re the pretty one? Because you’re the mayor’s daughter? Because you have everything? Because it’ll be so much fun to play with you?”

There’s a muffled squeak of pain and Allura’s knees give out from beneath her. “Wait, no no no, please, I- Please, don’t hurt them. I’ll do anything.”

“Ah, that’s a good girl.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: this is really really fucked up. sorry about the end.

“I know this morning is probably the exact opposite of what you all want to be doing.” Dr. Holt says, rubbing his chin. “I get it. It’s a Monday. Since last Tuesday we’ve all been in a horrible rut. But this class, I think, can stand to spend a day and talk about something other than forensics.”

Pidge blew her hair out of her eyes, looking up at her dad and wondering why he thought it would be a good idea to be here today. Half the school was being kept home, the other half wandering the halls and making jokes about the attacks and playing pranks. If she could make the choice, she would have chosen to be home and away from the whole mess.

“Now, we’re very few in number today. Just Katie,” He points at her deliberately, before moving his finger along as he said each name. “Hunk. Shay.” He smiled. “Nyma. Allura. Only six of us. Now what could be a good coping mechanism with what has happened in the past week?”

Allura tapped her pencil against her lip and her nails against her phone screen, distracted. Shay seemed to be thinking hard, and Nyma just had a little smile on her face.

“Hunk?” Dr. Holt singles him out.

He coughed once, shrugging. “I don’t know. Crying? Thinking about what everyone meant to us? I don’t really know what you mean.”

“Those are ways, yes.” Dr. Holt nods. “But think for a moment. In order to truly deal with something, we must understand it. This isn’t just a truth as teenagers, this is a truth for humans. In order to get over something, you must understand it. And to understand something, sometimes you have to equate it to other things.”

“Oh, so we are doing forensics today?” Nyma butts in, eyebrows high and sarcastic smile wide. “Great. My best friend dies, two of our teachers get attacked and a third dies, and we’re going to sit in and talk about it. That makes plenty of sense.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what we are going to do, Nyma.” Dr. Holt stands straight, moving to the space in front of the desks. “Because life must go on after tragedy strikes. Now, what is comparable to death?”

“Birth?” Shay volunteers.

“Going to sleep?” Hunk guesses, shrugging and glancing at his girlfriend.

“Death.” Pidge glances up from her phone. Her father frowns but nods.

“Can you explain that, Katie?”

She lifts a hand to brace under her chin. “Yeah, I can. Death isn’t a beginning or an ending, it’s an event. And the only thing it can compare to is itself.”

He nods. “That’s an interesting thought. Now how can you compare something to itself?”

“Well, horror movies, I guess?” She shrugs.

Hunk scoffs. “We’re not going to compare this to fiction, this actually happened Pidge.”

“No no, hear me out.” She shifts and steeples her fingers in front of her chest. “We can compare it to a horror movie. Think about it. Rolo, he’s home alone, someone comes in and stabs him to death. His phone goes missing, and that’s the beginning scene. It’s a classic.”

“Okay, I’ll bite.” Nyma turns in her seat to look at Pidge, even Allura taking a second to spare her attention. “Go on?”

Pidge nods. “Then we had, what, Iverson? That was a total freakshow, from what Keith told me. And that was at school. So typical high schooler horror movie, first thirty minutes.”

“And what about the underclassmen? Rolo was a senior and Iverson taught senior ROTC. Where do they factor in?” Dr. Holt adds.

“Well, they were found at school. Wasn’t it like, really messy? Very obvious? Totally doesn’t go with the M.O. of the first two. They probably saw what happened with Iverson and had to be taken care of.”

“Well aren’t you just the smartest little cookie.” Nyma sucks her teeth pointedly and flips her hair. “What about your friend Shiro? And didn’t your brother get stabbed too, or something?”

“Well yeah, Matt got stabbed and Shiro got his arm cut off. The killer is playing with us.” Pidge tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “And because they and Rolo were in our friend group, that means we’re totally the targets.”

“I think that’s a bit farther than the metaphor will really go.” Dr. Holt shifts uncomfortably. “You’re not actually in a horror movie.”

“No, but you said it yourself.” Pidge shrugs. “To get over something, we have to understand it. And if we were in a horror movie, the only way to survive would be to get smart.”

“And how do we get smart, and not get killed?” Nyma points a pencil her way. “How do those pretty girls in horror movies get to the end.”

“Well there’s the original rules, but we should probably throw those out the window.” Pidge sat forward. “Like, you’ve seen Scream, right? They say it all in that one. Gotta be a virgin,” Nyma and Hunk snicker. “Can’t drink or smoke.” Shay chuckles at that one, shaking her head. “And above all, you have to be the main character or totally irrelevant to the plot. And you have to be in the right place and you cannot ever ever say ‘I’ll be right back’. Those are famous last words, people.” Even Allura snorts at that one.

“Well if we throw those out the window, does that mean being the opposite will save us?” Nyma waggles her eyebrows at Allura, who rolls her eyes back. “Be as promiscuous and stupid as possible?”

“No, that’ll get you killed too.” Pidge leans back a bit. “You have to figure out who the killer is, but keep your head down. Figure out who would want Rolo, and Iverson, and whoever else dead. Then you fucking keep it to yourself, wait for the shit to hit the fan, lock yourself in your closet, and pray no one noticed you snooping.”

“That’s a really shitty plan. If you know who the killer is, you tell the police.” Hunk shook his head. “Besides, we’re kind of ignoring something really important about this whole thing.”

“What?” Dr. Holt adds, crossing his arms.

“Lance is still missing.”

“His parents never filed anything.” Allura pointed out. “As far as the police know, he’s not missing.”

“But that’s just it. Where is he? Who took him?” Hunk shifted. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of him, but I’m worried that he got kidnapped, or killed, and that we’ll never see him again.”

“Or he could be the killer.” Nyma pointed a pencil at Hunk. “He so had motivations.”

“Yeah like what?” Pidge rolled her eyes. “He was destroyed after we heard about Rolo.”

“Well, you said it yourself. We have to think about who would Rolo and Iverson dead. He wasn’t in senior ROTC, but Rolo and I are.”

“Then you’re a suspect.” Shay points out.

Nyma narrowed her eyes. “Please, why would I want my best friend dead. Anyways. Lance was obsessed with Rolo. Like, to the extreme. Anywhere Rolo went, Lance just had to go too. When Rolo realized he was failing, Lance flipped out with him and they broke into this abandoned building to deface stuff. They both had some serious tempers, and I wouldn’t put it past Lance to do something stupid.” She stands, grabbing her bag. “Now if you’ll excuse me, Mr. Holt- Matt- he has a free period right now and I’m getting some tutoring from him. So,” She glances at Allura. “Bye.”

As she sweeps out of the room, not even a note from Dr. Holt to protect her, the room falls silent.

“Well. Punnett squares?” Dr. Holt offers.

Rax was not enjoying being home alone. His grandmother was currently in the hospital, his parents and older siblings at work, and Shay out getting lunch with her boyfriend. He would be out with his own boyfriend but Lance was still torturously missing.

He stood up and left the couch, wandering towards the kitchen. There was nothing to do and nowhere to go, with the car being used and the main road too far uphill from their little two story. Rax felt condemned, nothing to do but clean and watch tv and wish Lance would text him-

Oh, his phone buzzed.

‘Hey babe xo sorry I didn’t text u’

Rax couldn’t stop the relieved smile, leaning against the doorframe as he taps out a quick ‘it’s fine, missed u’.

‘I have a surprise for u, go to ur window’

Rax glanced around and stood straight, heading for the stairs. He wasn’t sure why Lance would be up there, but if this was an elaborate sneaking-in plot to make up for missing the Netflix date they’d set up the week before… well, he could live with it.

It seems like every board on the stairs creak as he makes his way up them, heart fluttering in anticipation the entire time. Had Lance gotten him a present, would he be standing down below, had he scaled the wall and ended up leaning against the locked window, waiting to fall and break his arm again? Rax had no idea, and that was what made it more exciting.

Rax and Shay were twins and shared rooms, but luckily they also shared tastes, so when he steps in there is never a clash between the two sides, never a fight. It was just their room, done in sleek grays and clean blacks with the occasional yellow or multicolored trinket.

Their window is nice, big and jutting out just slightly with a loveseat underneath. Lance and Rax had cuddled there a few times, and it was becoming their unofficial spot the way Hunk’s basement was his and Shay’s. Looking out, though, he doesn’t see Lance anywhere. Rax’s eyebrows furrow and he pulls out his phone to tap another message. ‘here. What’s the surprise??’

The stairs creak. Rax turns, blinking in confusion. “Shay? Dad? Who’s there?”

Nothing answers him, and he chalks it up to wind, or general “home alone” syndrome. Rax looks back at his phone and sighs. Lance wasn’t replying anymore. So he sends another text. ‘r u messing with me? Not laughing.’

Rax settles into the loveseat, the cushions worn and comfortable. “What’s your game…” he whispers to himself, looking at the phone, looking at the conversation. It wasn’t like Lance to play tricks and leave Rax hanging.

Honestly, that was part of what Rax liked so much. Lance was honest and smart, caring and never willing to let someone take the brunt of anything. He was supportive and interesting and kind, and the thought of him going back on that and doing something so out of character twisted Rax’s stomach.

The phone buzzed again.

‘xoxo babe I’m just messing w u. real surprise downstairs, u’ll be laughing soon babes’

Rax wouldn’t deny the bad feeling he got from the text. Since when did Lance call him babe that much? And the creepiness…

‘what’s the surprise? I’m serious lance’

‘c’mon, no fun in that T-T just come down ok’

Rax leaned his head against the window and sighed. ‘u know I hate surprises’

‘then u don’t want 2 see me?’

That got his attention. So Lance was here. Rax made quick work of standing, running a hand over his head and smiling to himself. Maybe Shay had given him a spare key, maybe the back door had been unlocked. Whatever it was, Rax was beaming as he left the room and turned into the hallway. But then he pauses, hand on the doorway and phone still open to the conversation.

Across the hallway, by the stairs, is a figure standing, motionless, in a Halloween-type black cloak and a plain white mask. Something glints at the figure’s side that Rax belatedly realizes is a knife. They stand, Rax frozen and the figure watching him, for a few seconds.

Then Rax chucks his phone at the figure as hard as he can and steps back, slamming the bedroom door shut. “Fuck this, I’m not some white girl!” He yells, shoulder against the wood and hand locked around the doorknob. He and his sister were wrestlers and had, on several different occasions, benched Lance. Rax had no idea who could be in the mask or why they had Lance’s phone, but the moment his thoughts turned that direction his grip loosened just a bit. What if they had Lance?

His phone buzzes outside the door before being slid underneath it, skidding out to the side to show just a text from lance, an over-exaggerated crying emoji.

About when he’s looking down to stare at that, there’s a sound of wood splitting and then a blossoming pain in his shoulder.

Shay was happy for Hunk, she really was. He’d been so excited to finally get a text back from Lance, even if it was just ‘sorry I haven’t been talking to anyone lately, my sister’s apartment has the WORST wifi. Upd8 me on the gossip train?’ which, in her opinion, wasn’t actually a good excuse for not telling anyone where you were or if you were safe for nearly a week. But that wasn’t her business.

She steps into the house, her bag on one shoulder and her shoes off before the door is closed. “Rax?” She calls, not able to hear anything. When there’s no response she shrugs and goes to set her bag in the living room. The tv was on but not muted, which implied that her brother was home but had wandered to do something else.

She leaves it on and steps into the kitchen.

Part of the ‘we can’t believe you got suspended’ punishment was keeping the house clean when he was there, which wasn’t very hard for Rax. What was odd, however, was the dirty cup in the sink and the plate, spatula, and pan on the stove. He didn’t like leaving anything out.

“Rax?” She calls again, putting the dishes into the sink. “Hello?”

Shay goes upstairs then. Maybe he’d felt sick and gone to lay down? That was the only thing that made sense. He didn’t clean up when he was sick, but every other time the kitchen would have been wiped down and spotless.

The stairs creak as usual, loud and in your face. It’s the kind of noise that prevented any kind of sneaking and resulting in many a night of sleeping on the couch downstairs to avoid waking people up after a good midnight snack.

Now doesn’t feel like that kind of time though.

At the top, Shay notices the smell.

She turns towards it and sees the bathroom door cracked, and she steps toward it.

“Rax? If you’re in there, say something.”

The silence remains and she pushes the door open slowly, eyes trained on the tile floor… covered in drying blood.

Her heart seems to stop as she forces her eyes up and, looking into the tub, her breath catches.

Rax is sprawled, one leg hooked over the tub’s side and his eyes trained up, unseeing and unnaturally open. His mouth is open and blood had dribbled out of the corner of it, and his shirt was pushed up to show the myriad of cuts and stab wounds.

Shay’s breath returns, but only enough to scream.

After school Matt gives Pidge a ride up to the hospital and she breaches it with all the delicacy of a tsunami hitting beachside. Well, maybe not that extreme, but she uses her no-nonsense voice on the nurses and curious old women in her path until she reaches the room.

713\. Something about that felt very…. Unlucky.

Keith is sitting by Shiro’s bed, reading some kind of car magazine with a flat, bored face and his bruises from the fight with Lance finally clear. Shiro looks like a mess, his face pale from blood loss and his right side very… imbalanced. There was no joking about his arm having been cut off. She waits in the doorway until Keith realizes she isn’t going to start the conversation, looking up slowly and very much like she was bothering him.

“We’re gonna go for a drive.” Pidge crosses her arms. “Get your keys.”

“Excuse me?” Keith scoffed, leaning back in the chair and closing the magazine. “Why would I go anywhere?” He glances at his unconscious boyfriend. “Seriously. Why?”

“Because if you drive me around and help me look for Lance, I’ll tell you why he hates you so much.”

Keith couldn’t get up faster.

They make it out pretty quickly, only a gently peck on Shiro’s forehead, a quick elevator ride, and then they’re pulling out of the parking garage and leaving the blur of concrete and low lights behind.

“Where are we heading?”

“Turn left here, go for San Marco.” She nods, settling into the seat and pulling the familiar weight of his laptop onto her knees to watch how the car does. “I’ll tell you after you buy me taco bell and we make sure no one has seen him at the library.”

Keith rolls his eyes but lowers his foot onto the gas, the car purring underneath them and the stats going berserk.

“So,” Keith says around a mouthful of cinnamon and grease after they pull out of the taco bell, her getting lettuce and shredded cheese getting all over his keyboard. “Why does he hate me?”

Pidge makes a ‘hold on’ noise that comes out more like a ‘shush’ noise and swallows the bite. “So, do you remember back in middle school when you were the only boy with a dirt bike and you and that one girl, Lena Sanchez, would get into races to see who’d win?”

“Yeah, shit.” He switches lanes and makes a reckless turn to get onto the road to the library. “Yeah? What about her. She was cool.”

“Well, that was like mid parental divorce, right?”

“Yeah, she liked to get into fights and was the posterchild of middle school angst.”

The car is silent for a moment as Pidge stares at him, her lips pursed and eyebrows raised at him.”

He sighs. “Okay, fine. We were the posterchildren of middle school angst. Happy?”

“Yes. Well, she was super into you, dude. Like, if you’d asked her to one of the numerous shitty school dances, she would have flipped her shit and yanked you in for a kiss right there.”

A smile quirks up at the side of his mouth as he remembers it, slowing down when a light turns yellow too far away for him to run. “Yeah.”

“Well, when you left she was upset. You totally dropped her. No calls, no texts, no cryptic chalk messages on the playground, nothing.”

“Yeah? I got sucked into highschool drama. You know how it is.”

“Yeah, I do. But you kinda broke her heart.”

Keith glances at Pidge at that one, and it’s obvious that he’s aching a bit too at the sound of that. “I couldn’t find her when school started up again. I wanted to wait until we were in highschool together. I asked all the freshmen, all the teachers, but no one had heard of her.”

“Yeah, because she wasn’t Lena anymore.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Her mom got remarried to one Mr. McClain and Lena came out. Remember when she cut off all her hair?”

“No, I don’t think I was there for that.”

“Well, if you had been, you would have seen the exact moment she decided she was going to let people know he was Lance.”

It takes a second to work itself out in his head and he gasps, almost missing the library turn. “Wait, shit? What the fuck?”

Pidge nodded. “Lance also kinda forgot exactly when he transitioned, so you not recognizing him broke his heart a second time.”

Keith remembered the way Lance had looked when they’d first met, him passing Lance’s table at lunch and the awkward conversation that had followed. Lance had looked surprised and excited and warm, and Keith had been in a bad mood and completely brushed him off. It had been turned into an epic origin style type archenemy meeting, but knowing the truth turned it into something bitter.

“I knew he looked familiar, but I just thought it was because he went to the same middle school I had. Fuck, why didn’t he just tell me?”

“Keith, have you ever tried coming out to your crush? Besides, you seemed to decide you despised him on principle when he made friends with Rolo. How would you have even taken that? Can you picture yourself taking him seriously, let alone answering positively?”

Keith gnaws on his lip and leans his head against the wheel, finally parked at the library. “Fuck, I can’t.”

She pats his back. “Now, can I ask you a weird question?”

“Yeah, I guess. We can walk inside in a minute.”

“How did you know Rolo got stabbed?” Pidge closes the laptop, shoulders tense. “Because you knew that and I didn’t and it was really weird.”

“What? Oh…” Keith sighed. “Last Wednesday I got this text from him at about one in the morning saying that he wanted to show me something, and when I got there all I could smell was this burning noise from the kitchen and, when I went around to the back to look in, I could see him on the kitchen floor. I called an ambulance and pretended to be his neighbor, and I hoped that he’d be okay. But then he wasn’t.”

“You realize how that sounds, right?”

“Yeah, that’s why I didn’t tell anyone about it.”

“Did you tell the police?”

“No, they don’t need to know about that. I’m already a suspect as is.”

Pidge snorts. “Well, being cryptic and saying things about knives is a way to do it.”

“I didn’t hurt Rolo.” Keith half turns, voice hard. “Okay? I didn’t hurt him. I wanted to clear everything up with him. I was tired of fighting all the time.”

“I get that, I’m just throwing that out there. Don’t be weird and cryptic. Unofficial horror movie rule.”

Keith flashed her a look. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh yeah, you’re still suspended. Today in forensics we talked about death and how to cope with it, and I brought up comparing death to horror movies. Nyma got pretty heated and basically said ‘It’s Lance’.”

Keith blew some air out and stared at her. “Lance didn’t do it. He couldn’t have.”

“She argued for it pretty heavily.” Pidge shrugged.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Keith stared at her. “He’s your best friend! He didn’t do it.”

“I know, but he has been missing since last Wednesday. He hasn’t talked to anyone.”

“What do you mean? He’s been texting me constantly.”

That makes Pidge pause. “What? Give me your phone.”

Keith unlocks it and hands it over, and sure enough, his queue of texts from Lance is real. There’s all kinds of things there, rude messages and thinly veiled jabs and occasionally whiny-sounding things that had likely been sent to other people.

“Why would he text you? No offense, but usually he’s way less…” Pidge scrolls up, sees that Keith had been replying pretty regularly. Usually along the vein of ‘leave me alone’, ‘what did I do to hate you so much’, and ‘fuck off’. Which, given the content of her friend’s antagonistic messages, made sense.

“I don’t know how he has my number.” Keith admits. “We don’t talk. Once he texted me for a project, but I assumed he deleted everything after.”

“No, Lance doesn’t delete anything. He’s gotta have receipts.” She sighs and taps a new message- just a simple ‘why haven’t u been talking to ur actual friends?’. “This is so fucking weird. Seriously, why would he ignore me, ignore Hunk, ignore Allura, but talk to you?”

“Maybe he just wanted a break from you guys. I don’t know, I don’t question him.”

The phone buzzes between them and Pidge picks it up, eyebrows furrowed. “Okay, atleast he’s replying quickly, that’s normal.”

‘give keith’s phone back 2 him’

Pidge looks around, eye wide. “How the hell does he know it’s me?”

“What?” Keith takes the phone and looks over the message, paling a bit when the next message buzzes through. “Oh my god- it says, um, ‘don’t show these to’ and he used the number two, god, what a dork- ‘don’t show these to anyone. I’m always watching babe’.” Keith looks at Pidge, and suddenly fresh doubt was born. “How the hell could he be watching us?”

Pidge set the laptop on the floorboard. “Let’s go into the library, he’s probably watching us from the window like a creep. Maybe he’s just screwing around?”

“This doesn’t seem like something he’d do- did I piss him off?”

“Do you really need to be asking me that?” Pidge offers in a deadpan as she steps out of the car. “Come on, let’s find him.”

Nyma breezes into the classroom fifty minutes late with a bright smile and her hair wet, pulled into a haphazard bun rather than deal with it. Allura relates to it and lets her own hair out of the ponytail, carding her fingers through.

“Nyma, you’re late. May I remind you that I’m only staying after to provide you both a place to study?” Mr. Sendak crosses his arms and raises his eyebrows at her. “You could study just as well in a public library or at home.”

Nyma sets her bag down at the desk next to Allura and right in front of him, smile unfaltering. “But if I did that then I wouldn’t get to see your smiling face.” Mr. Sendak, clearly not smiling, nods. “And I need someone to keep me on task, so,” She gestures at him and Allura.

“Alright. Well, as you know my best area is history.” Mr. Sendak backs up a step to lean against his desk. His historical fixation is well known. Not only is he the AP world history and US history teacher, but he spent a great deal of time thinking about, talking about, and reconsidering military history. The easiest way to get extra credit from him was to get into a particularly rousing debate about military tactics from other centuries. With Mr. Sendak’s own military service and years of experience both practical and in the books, he was a walking fountain of knowledge. His left arm had been replaced with a large, fully functioning prosthetic, and sight in his left eye was almost nonexistent from the only situation in his military career that he didn’t talk about at lengths.

But that wasn’t all he was good for.

“I’m also functional in math up to calculus, I believe, though it’s been a while and I’d need to brush up on it. English is a fair subject to me and I’m capable, and we teach French, Chinese, Spanish, and ASL here, correct?”

Allura nods as Nyma pulls a pen out to chew on the end of.

“I’m fluent in Spanish and Chinese, and I have enough practice in basic ASL but wouldn’t be able to help much.”

“Sir?” Allura pipes up.”

“Yes?”

“We’re working on chemistry homework, with all respect.”

“Oh. Well, I’m of no use in that respect.”

Allura chuckles and Nyma rolls her eyes.

“So, are you on the same unit we are?” Allura asks.

“Maybe. Before we start the boring stuff though, I have to know.” Nyma reaches over and takes a lock of hair between her fingers and rubbing it. “Are you taking anyone special to Pidge’s party next week?”

Allura blinks. “What? Like, a boyfriend or girlfriend or something? Or like friends?”

“Like boyfriend or girlfriend.”

Allura blushes and shrugs. “Well no, I’m not dating anyone at the time. That would be pretty hard to pull off. I was probably just going to go with a friend.”

“Well, if you’re lonely the night of, I’d be happy to go with you. Did you know Keith finished my bike last week?”

“Bike? Like motorcycle? I didn’t know you rode.”

“Well, I do. And the feeling of wind rushing past you, of nothing being able to stop you, there’s nothing like it.”

Allura smiles slowly, nodding. “Yeah, that does sound pretty amazing.”

“Do you wanna go riding with me sometime, maybe before the party?” Nyma bites her lip, and Allura can’t take her eyes off of how the soft looking skin pulls. “Just you and me, the bike, and the wind?”

Allura finds herself nodding. “Yeah, I’d like that. But we should probably…” She taps the paper with her pen, sheepishly glancing up at Mr. Sendak, who was looking at them in open amusement and sipping his coffee. “We are taking up his time and there’s a lot I need to catch you up on.”

Nyma snorts and tucks her feet into the metal basket under the desk, scanning the paper. “Well, while I read this, can we talk about that rant Pidge went on in Forensics this morning?”

“For a sec, I guess.” She glances over at Mr. Sendak. “Um, Dr. Holt asked us about coping mechanisms on dealing with death and we kind of dove headfirst off the cliff of ‘real scientific stuff’ into some weird theory that we’re in a horror movie.”

That draws a laugh from the normally stoic and composed teacher. “Really, that’s a pretty wild jump. Was it- who was it saying that again?”

“Katie Holt.” Nyma supplies fluidly. “One minute we’re like ‘oh, death can only be understood through metaphors’ and then she’s like ‘we’re in a horror movie’.” Nyma screwed her face up. “Like, how tacky can you get?”

“Hey, you got pretty into that discussion too. I wasn’t paying attention much to the beginning of it, but by the end you were practically calling for a witch hunt for Lance.”

Nyma shrugged. “Well that’s different. I’m just telling you guys about some weird stuff I noticed and suggesting that maybe the killer is right under your noses.”

“It sounded pretty damning to me. But c’mon, I know Lance. He couldn’t kill anyone.”

“He started a fist fight last week with Keith, and hasn’t been seen since. That’s suspicious.”

“And Keith and Rax got into a fistfight last week too. If we were putting everyone who has gotten into a fight on this list, we’re all going to be on it. I’ve gotten into fistfights.”

“Yeah, but you’re not capable of murder either….” Nyma smiled at her. “Or are you?”

Allura snorts. “No?” She glances at Mr. Sendak. “I don’t think I’d be able to handle that kind of weight on my shoulders. Knowing that I took something like that from someone else…” She shakes her head. “I really don’t think I could.”

Nyma nods. “I guess. Do you think you could kill someone if they really screwed you over?”

“No?”

“Girls, really.” Mr. Sendak stands straighter. “We’re very far from chemistry.”

“Sorry sir.” Nyma smiles at him cheerfully. “It’s just really interesting, you know? I mean it’s horrible, our friends are dying around us, but it’s hard not to think about it.”

Allura nods, but she can’t help but notices. “Our friends? We only know one of the people who died.”

“Yeah, that’s what I meant. You know,” Nyma flashes her teeth in a quick, wide smile. “I’ve just been thinking a lot about everything that’s happening, and I keep jumping to the worst case scenario.”

Allura nods. “Okay, I guess I understand that. I’ve just been trying to…” Keep up with the killer’s demands. That’s what she wants to say, but obviously she can’t tell her cute classmate that. “Wrap my head around it. I still keep expecting to see Rolo walk in, tell a bad joke, something. It’s been really hard for me. I can only imagine how you’re feeling.”

Nyma sighs. “I’ve been managing. It’s been… Hard, but it’s getting easier as time passes.”

They hear a ringing noise begin, and Mr. Sendak glances at his phone. “Excuse me, I’m going to go take this. Try to get to the chemistry soon?” He raises his eyebrows pointedly as he steps into the hallway, leaving the two alone.

“Yeah we really should get back…” Allura starts, but trails off when she looks up and sees Nyma getting onto her knees in her seat and leaning over the gap to steal a kiss.

It isn’t long. Their lips brush against each other, gloss smearing and noses brushing. It’s done almost as soon as it’d happened, Nyma leaning back and tucking a stray chunk of blonde hair behind her ear. “Sorry. I really wanted to.”

Allura weighs her options for a few seconds. Kiss the cute girl, or turn her down and leave more room in her life for the killer to wedge fears in. She decides then that fuck it, she’s been through too much not to deserve it. She surges forward and slides her hand to the back of Nyma’s neck, stealing a kiss in return. This one lasts longer, lips tangling and teeth bumping and flickers of tongue turning everything messy. When Allura pulls back to exhale slowly and blink. “Maybe I really wanted to, too.”

Mr. Sendak steps back in and they both straighten, turning to look at him.

“Excuse me girls. Something has just come up and I need to go help a friend. If you two could continue studying at home, I’ll see you tomorrow in class.”

Allura glanced back at Nyma, and they both dissolve into giggles. She can’t help it.

“Alright, this is Coran, returning from a short water break to continue the autopsy of one Rax. Murdered this morning, brought in around an hour after his death, and given the go ahead by the head detective forty five minutes ago. The cause of death seems to be the multiple stab wounds and cuts, inflicted by an unknown assailant.” Coran pulls on his gloves, talking into the voice recording app he has on his phone. Ah, the wonders of technology that made his job so much easier.

“Current state has already been photographed and saved to his file, so I will begin the first incision.”

Coran hated his job sometimes. It was a big help in giving others closure, and an even bigger help in confirming questions, but his daughter in law’s friends were not who he meant to have on his table. Her face every time he brought her news to keep her safe, the fear and disappointment and guilt. He wondered what her last words with this one had been, wondered if they were close, if it would destroy her.

What kind of question was that? He lets out a small, joyless laugh and slowly peels back the skin.

“Alright. Um… Seeing the usual. Except- uh, well, that’s odd. There seems to be something inside of the ribcage… Nestled right by the heart.”

What the hell?

“It is plastic and metal, I believe, rectangular- it’s a phone. There was a phone inside of his chest. Well, this would explain the strain around one of the cuts. I believe the assailant shoved their fist into his chest and placed the phone there. I’ll give it to someone else and see if they can clean it up and figure out whose it is.”

Lance had been let out of the chair, Nyma wasn’t a completely heartless bitch. Her music taste sucked, but she didn’t actively try to make it worse for him.

That said, the situation sucked a whole lot.

There wasn’t very much in the way of lighting when Nyma was gone. She had changed up the way of locking him up, switching to shackling his ankle to a hook in the corner of the garage. There was a reachable bathroom, which eased a lot of his worries, and a dingy sink with a plastic cup. Nyma just patted his shoulder when showing him that, and promised the water was safe to drink. Not that he’d been worried about it being unsafe, but now he was.

Nyma had also introduced him to his new friends, “mattress on the ground”, “jar of peanut butter”, “loaf of cheap bread”, and a roughed up copy of ‘prisoner of azkaban’ which was particularly upsetting.

Lance didn’t understand why she was doing this. Every time he pleaded with her to let him go, insisted that someone would do something, she’d just pat his face and brush her lips against his earlobe and promise that she’d get away with everything that was going to happen to him.

Yeah, that was very inspiring.

Lance had no idea how long it’d been since she left him. He drank the water and ate the peanut butter and bread whenever his stomach started hurting- being careful not to eat too much at once, in case it took her a long time to come back to him. There were no windows, and the only light in the garage was from a flickering light by the other side, where the chair and the stairs up to the door out of the room was.

Reading hurt his eyes, but boredom drove him to do it anyways. He had read through the book four times, slept fitfully and often, tested the limits of where he could get with the chain. Spoiler, it wasn’t very far. There was nothing else in the little corner, and no amount of struggling could get it off. There were no tools to wedge it off with, as the peanut butter lid did nothing and he didn’t want to attempt anything with the cup in case it broke it.

He resigned that he was going to punch Nyma in the face next time he saw her.

When something interesting did happen, though, it was when he was sleeping.

There were some soft noises that he disregarded at first. There was a low hum coming from the fridge in the opposite corner that he’d gotten used to, and sometimes there’d be car noises outside. No amount of yelling got any response, however, so he’d stopped wasting the breath.

But then there had been another noise. A loud slap. A muffled grunt. That had gotten his attention, woken him up.

The lights were on, which took some blinking to get used to. Lance squinted across the room, expecting Nyma but instead getting a tall figure, head to toe in black other than a mysterious white mask.

“Oh, are we playing dress-up now?” Lance asks bitterly, sitting up self-consciously. He’s still in just a loose shirt and boyshorts, which don’t do much for his confidence against the dementor-looking fuck and the… other person tied to the chair. What was going on now?

“Ha, funny.” The person says, sounding nothing like Nyma. There was some kind of effect, turning it into one of those typical scary movie voices. “Do you want to dial back on the smart talk now? Because I have something you want and a deal to make.”

Lance bit his lip to hide the intake of breath, eyes on the person tied to the chair. “Okay. Fine. What do I want?”

“Not him.” The figure rests a gloved hand on the person’s shoulder. They’re wearing nice shoes, styled jeans, and a dark purple dress shirt with a striped tie looping around their neck before being used to tie them to the chair. Well, the longer Lance looks, he realizes that the person is a guy. A familiar looking guy. One with sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing a prosthetic on one arm, and muscles in spades. “He’s part of the deal.” The figure moves his hand to pat the guy’s head, which is conveniently covered with a pillow case.

“What then?” Lance moves to shakily stand, wincing at the stiffness in his body. He hadn’t been moving very much since he last finished reading the book, tired of Rowling and tired of sleeping and tired of everything.

The figure steps forward, fishing in a pocket for a phone that Lance ends up recognizing as his own. He ignores the blow to his pride and shuffles forward to the end of the chain, meeting the figure halfway.

The picture on the screen is Rax, a boot on his chest and blood soaking his shirt. He’s panting and giving the camera a dirty look, which goes straight to Lance’s chest.

“What did you do Nyma- he didn’t do anything to you!” Lance yells, reaching out for the phone. It’s pulled out of his reach and he stumbles, almost tripping. “What’s going on, why was he bleeding?”

“My associate has him. For the record, I’m not Nyma. Anyways.” The killer stows the phone. “You have two choices. Refuse, and I’ll give the call to kill him. Accept, and he’s safe and you get rewarded.”

“What do I to do to keep him safe?” Lance finds himself asking, stumbling over the words. “I’ll do anything. Please don’t do anything else to him, he really didn’t do anything wrong.”

The figure chuckles, which sounds weird coming through the voice changer and the mask. “So you’ve decided. No backing out now.”

Lance nods numbly. He didn’t have a choice, not really.

The figure moves back to grab the back of the chair, and pushes it loudly to just in front of Lance, in his reach. He even had to back up a step to keep from bumping knees with the tied up man. And he sees now, that the man’s wrists are bound and zip tied to the arms of it, that his ankles are as well, that an added piece of plywood keeps his head straight up for support.

The figure pulls off the pillowcase.

“Mr. Sendak?” Lance chokes out, hands flying to pull his shirt down. “What is he- why- what’s going on? Why is he here?”

“You’re going to do something for me.” The figure pulls a syringe out of nowhere and buries it in the teacher’s neck, pumping him full of a clear liquid. “There we go! Now he won’t even scream and beg. Easy.”

Lance tenses, his hands locked on the bottom of his shirt. “He’s unconscious?”

“Yes. Good boy, very observant.” The figure steps closer, close enough to touch, close enough to give Lance goosebumps. “Can you guess what I’m going to have you do to him?”

A million thoughts fly through Lance’s head, but none of them make sense. “I… I don’t know.”

“I’ll give you a hint, little boy.” The figure moves behind him, sliding their hands to cover Lance’s and move them. With no idea what else to do, Lance lets himself be manhandled. “I want you to use these.”

Lance breathes in, chest rising shakily. “Yes?”

“And I want you to claw his eyes out of his fucking skull.”

Lance chokes on a sob, trying to pull his hands back to his chest. “What the fuck? I can’t do that! I can’t kill someone!”

The figure tightens their hands on his, forcing them to rest against his teacher’s cheeks. “You’re going to do it because I told you to.” The figure hisses, close enough now for Lance to almost be able to tell where the voice changer picked the voice up. “Have you already forgotten what’s at stake?”

Lance shifts back, stepping more into the killer- and he realizes, now, that this person must have been the one who killed Rolo. Who else would attack Matt, have Nyma kidnap him and hold Rax hostage, make him kill someone? He steps back into the killer’s space to try to run away from the task, and the killer steps forward, forcing him to stand inbetween Mr. Sendak’s knees.

“I’ll make her slit his throat on camera if you don’t fucking do it. I’ll have her finger fuck his wound while you watch. Do it, or I’ll call her now!” The killer growls, one hand sliding to dig into Lance’s hip and keep him close.

There’s no other choice.

His hands are shaking, fingers wobbling so hard he can barely keep them there. He goes for the right eye first, because it’s a coin toss where both sides lose. 

The first touch is awkward, his index and middle finger scratching over the eyelid. Mr. Sendak moves a little in his sleep, makes a small noise. Lance whimpers.

“Do you want me to hold his eyelid open?” The killer breathes, and Lance bites his lip to hold a noise in. “He won’t feel anything. He’s under a metric fuckload of anesthesia, it’s basically just us in here.”

Lance feels the killer slide their hips against his ass, feels a phantom bump. _What?_

Lance swallows and uses his left hand to move the eyelids, feeling his stomach turn over at the thought of what he was about to do. If he didn’t do it, Rax would die. That was what he had to focus on. There was no other way out. The shackle was still heavy on his ankle and the killer apparently grinding on him. This was all he could do.

Eyes are apparently very slimy. And twitchy. Just one brush of his fingers against it has Mr. Sendak twitching in his sleep, has Lance blinking sympathetically and trying to keep them steady. He doesn’t know what he’s doing though, so he just tries to… grab it. With his fingers, digging the nails in a little bit when they slide. Pidge and Matt usually knew to keep the horror movies away from him, so he’d never been up close with something as gruesome as this.

There’s a low laugh in his ear, another slide of the killer’s hips and his ass. “Going slow enough?”

Lance shakes, swallowing another sob, and tries to pull.

“Oh, slipped out of your fingers.” The killer tuts. Lance can feel the blood under his fingernails. “Try harder. And hurry it up, your friend doesn’t have much time.”

Lance nods shakily, this time just forcing two fingers into the corner and _pushing_. He lets out a sob when the eye actually pops out, rolling down his teacher’s cheek. Fuck, what the fuck?

“Now take it in your hand and squeeze. Until it squishes, until it’s ruined.”

Lance does. The killers hand moves from his hip to cup the inside of his thigh, right where the boyshorts end. “Good boy. Now put your fingers into the hole.”

Lance gags, but he does. It’s wet. And bloody, fuck, so bloody. The eyelids flutter and sag, wrapping around him disgustingly. Lance gags again, bile filling his mouth.

“Come on, you can do it. Just do everything I tell you, and your little friend will survive. You’re dating him, right? You’re his little boyfriend? You know he’d do anything for you, so you can do the same for him.”

Lance bites his tongue and forces his fingers in farther, trying to satisfy the killer.

“Get two more in there.” The killer lowers his voice, starting to rub Lance’s thigh and send shivers up his back. “Fingers, that is. Really feel it.”

Lance has to squeeze to do it, and he’s sure he rips or breaks something. Fuck. This is the most disgusting thing he’s ever done, and he’s shoveled pig shit. He gags again, whimpering. Unsure of what to do with his fingers inside, he just kind of wiggles them slightly, grimacing at how tight and soft it was, how wet it was.

“Okay, now you can pull them out.” The killer slips a thumb up his boyshirts, starting to rub circles and make Lance’s hips twitch as his cheeks fill in with color. “Do the left eye now too. Get both hands dirty, get blood everywhere.”

By now his teacher was shifting as much as his bonds allowed, groaning in pain and trying to shake his head. Lance felt so guilty, but he pushes his fingers in anyways, getting a much more effective removal this time. God, what would his friends think of him if they saw him? If they knew what he was doing.

Mr. Sendak was Hunk’s favorite teacher, he remembers as his fingers wipe up a stream of blood and smear it over the dark skin. What the fuck.

Red paints over his fingers as he goes through, murmured directions guiding every movement and urging him to do awful things. His fingers stroke, poke, pinch, touch things that he never thought he would, never wanted to, and the stray gloved hand ends up sliding fully into his underwear. Lance can’t do anything about it, tears streaking down his cheeks like blood down Mr. Sendak’s, hips shivering like his teacher’s bottom lip.

“Put your fingers in his mouth.” Lance slides them down and pushes between the teeth, shoulders hunching together. “Good boy. Take them back out. Wrap your hands around his neck.”

“Am I choking him now?” Lance asks, already moving, feeling the silk tie under his slippery hands. This wasn’t the kind of thing he ever imagined he’d be feeling like this.

“Yes, you catch on quick, don’t you?”

Lance tightens his hands, feels the hitch in Mr. Sendak’s breath. His hands are slippery, his heart is beating too hard, and he’s starting to become numb to the sight of blood. The killer’s fingers are still inside of him too, distracting him and making him shift slightly, awkwardly, trying to focus and not let himself get distracted. “Do you even know his first name?”

“No clue.”

Mr. Sendak jerks, his shoulders lifting and his mouth opening desperately. What the fuck.

“How does it feel, to have his life in your hands?”

Horrible. Lance doesn’t respond, knuckles white under the caked blood, starting to dry and smear and crumble. Mr. Sendak gasps now, his nails weakly scratching at the chair. Lance just digs his thumbs into the teacher’s windpipe, feels the ridges of it and how it moves as the air starts to be lost.

“Are you wondering if I’ve ever done this? I haven’t. You’re doing something I haven’t. Isn’t that exciting?”

Lance shifts in his grip, feeling a pit starting to form in his stomach as the hand starts to focus itself. He tries to keep his hands steady, locking his elbows and pushing forwards, face set in determination even as more tears spill. He wouldn’t be doing this if he had a choice, he reminds himself. He doesn’t have a choice.

Mr. Sendak struggles more, almost making Lance slip and lose traction, but he holds on. Then a few more jerks, and his teacher stills.

Lance holds on until the killer pulls his hand out of his boyshorts, wet and gross, and pulls Lance’s hands back. The killer is cooing something in his ear, is leading him to stand away from the _corpse_ and petting his face.

“You did so good.”

Lance shakes, lets a fresh wave of tears and shivers begin. He just fucking killed someone.

The killer steps away, goes to the fridge that’s been constantly buzzing in the corner, grabs some things that Lance only hears vaguely. Then he’s hurrying back over, and a spoon of something cold is being pressed against Lance’s lips.

He doesn’t recognize it, at first. It’s sickeningly sweet and freezing, the chunk of something else bumping against his tooth. Lance steps back, sucking on the bit of fluid that was stuck in his mouth and wiping at his cheek with his wrist, feeling blood smear and sobbing.

“It’s okay, stop crying, stop crying.” A gloved hand swats his hand away and wipes his cheek. “Just eat the cookie dough ice cream. It’s your favorite.”

And then Lance recognizes it. He shakes. He opens his mouth.

“Good boy, good boy.” The killer smiles. Lance sucks on the spoon and swallows, wincing at the cold shock but not freaking out as much. His hands fall to his sides and he scratches at his thighs, wanting out of his skin.

When the spoon gets pulled back, he swallows the oncoming set of hiccups. “C-can you call Nyma and tell her not to hurt R-rax?”

The killer pauses, then begins laughing.

“Rax? He’s been dead since this morning.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you've made it this far, congratulations!  
> also, because why wouldn't this be the best place to mention it. i'm opening writing commissions soon, and as you can tell i'm open to writing almost anything. go to spookyghostnerd.tumblr.com and message/send an ask if you're interested.
> 
> i only have 2 chapters after this plotted out, so two things. first of all, should i actually continue this after that point, and second, guesses on who the killer (besides nyma) is have been open since the first chapter, i just forgot to mention it haha.
> 
> also i'm fueled by commentary so any responses or confirmation that people are actually looking at this would be welcome!


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